South African Hiking and Kruger Safari

Welcome to South Africa! Johannesburg is one of the largest cities in South Africa, and this is where your hiking tour begins. Your guide will pick you up at the airport and take you to your hotel, where you can spend the rest of the day at your leisure.

After breakfast, you’ve got a longer day of driving ahead. You’ll arrive in Kruger National Park in the afternoon. Kruger is South Africa’s most renowned game reserve, home to lion, cheetah, hyena, elephant, zebra, and more. Once you enter the park, enjoy a game drive on your way to tonight’s rest camp.

Your hiking tour of South Africa kicks off with a morning hike around the Olifants River, led by a local game ranger. Then, you can enjoy breakfast and a siesta before your sunset game drive departs. Enjoy the majesty of Kruger under the setting sun, watching animals emerge and engage in hunt and play.

Today you’ll head off for another area just outside of the park, enjoying a relaxed game drive to Satara Rest Camp. Enjoy the fever trees and friendly resident birds before heading off to your camp for the night. You’re nearly guaranteed to meet animals along the way, so keep your eyes out the window.

Ready for the first big hike of the trip? You’ll depart from the lodge in the morning and start your hike on the Bushpig Trail, which traverses over the Marleskop Mountains of Eastern Drakensberg. Baboons and bushbuck peek out at you from the forest, and over 2000 plant species can be found as you pass through. Enjoy a picnic lunch, and then a vehicle will pick you up after your hike and take you back to the lodge. Enjoy a cold beer, dinner, and the view before bed.

Day 6 of your South African hiking tour takes you to Hazyview, a small farming town surrounded by fruit orchards. Hazyview is an adventurer’s paradise, with mountain biking, quadding, ziplining, tubing, and river rafting all available to you. You’ll eat breakfast on the way to Blyde River Canyon, where a hike over rocky terrain will give you fantastic views into the steep canyon. Then, near Hazyview you’ll hike to Bourke’s Luck Potholes, a collection of swirling whirlpools. Continue on to God’s Window, an area with incredible canyons, waterfalls, and rock formations. This beautiful region is known as Paradise Country, and it’ll be clear to you why it got its name. Once you’ve traversed the sheer cliffs, it’s onwards to the Graskop Gorge Lift. This lift will whisk you down the face of the gorge below, where you can travel across walkways and suspension bridges through the forest. Finally, it’s to the hotel for dinner and an evening of relaxing.

All too soon, it’s the last full day of your hiking tour in South Africa. Before heading to the hotel in Johannesburg, you’ll have the chance to shop at the Casterbridge Lifestyle Centre, which supports local artisans. Lunch will be served in the lovely village of Kaapschehoop, where wild horses roam freely. You’ll head up on the Escarpment Trail to enjoy stunning views over a sheer, 1000m drop into the Barberton Valley below. On a clear day, you can see all the way to Mozambique! Legend has it that ghosts haunt the area, so before too long you’ll hop into the car to head to Johannesburg for the night.

8 days of unforgettable hiking later, it’s time to leave South Africa. After breakfast at the hotel, your guide will take you to the airport. Safe travels home!