THE KRUGER NATIONAL PARK

The largest game reserve in South Africa, the Kruger National Park is larger than Israel. Nearly 2 million hectares of land that stretch for 352 kilometres (20 000 square kilometres) from north to south along the Mozambique border, is given over to an almost indescribable wildlife experience. Certainly it ranks with the best in Africa and is a flagship of the country’s national parks - rated as the ultimate safari experience.

The Kruger National Park lies across the provinces of Mpumalanga and Limpopo in the north of the country, just south of Zimbabwe and west of Mozambique. It now forms part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park – a peace park that links Kruger with game parks in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and fences are already coming down to allow game to freely roam in much the way it would have in the time before man’s intervention. When complete, the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park will extend across 35 000 square kilometres, 58% of it South African, 24% Mozambican and 18% Zimbabwean territory.

This is the land of baobabs, fever trees, knob thorns, marula and mopane trees underneath which lurk the Big Five, the Little Five (buffalo weaver, elephant shrew, leopard tortoise, ant lion and rhino beetle), the birding Big Six (ground hornbill, kori bustard, lappet-faced vulture, martial eagle, pel’s fishing owl and saddle-bill stork) and more species of mammals than any other African Game Reserve.

The Kruger is a self-drive destination, although there are guided tour operators, with an excellent infrastructure that includes picnic sites, rest camps, waterholes and hides. It’s a remarkable reserve offering an incredible experience of Africa at its most wild.

Xtreme Gap offers the following exciting gap year programs in South Africa:

The Weather in South Africa

South Africa enjoys a temperate and pleasant climate, with lovely warm sunny days most of the year. The seasons of the southern hemisphere are opposite to those in the northern hemisphere so our summers runs from November to February, when most of the country is characterised by hot weather with afternoon thunderstorms. Winters are generally mild and dry. South Africa enjoys one of the world's highest average daily hours of sunshine - 8.5 compared with 3.8 in London, 6.4 in Rome and 6.9 in New York. Around the Kruger it can feel hotter than in Cape town.

Take a Gap year in South Africa in SOUTH AFRICA with Xtreme Gap, one of the world’s most Xtreme Travel companies.

South Africa is located on the southern tip of the African continent, bordered by Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique in the north and encompasses the independent mountain kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland. To the west South Africa is flanked by the Atlantic Ocean and the warm Indian Ocean on the east. South Africa occupies 4% of the continent's total landmass, covering an area of 1 221 040 square kilometres.

Discover the highlights of a South African gap year and take on our Xtreme South Africa Adrenaline tour, take in the stunning coastline of the Cape Peninsular, the "Garden Route" and the Winelands of the Western Cape, and the national parks teeming with wildlife in the north with various adventure travel activities along the way.

You can also take advantage of South Africa’s stunning climate and don aviator shades to become a micro light pilot above the big 5 around the Kruger national park. For those that prefer to keep their feet on the ground, we have a very cool game ranger program that enables you to become a field guide in south Africa. Before you qualify you will have done a minimum of 50 on foot approaches to the big 5!