Game can be viewed a variety of different ways in South Africa. Each way of doing it has its own benefits and downsides. Far more can be made of your game viewing when you do it to meet your desires.

Guided Drive

The most common game viewing is done in a group with a trained guide. This is great to check off animals that you haven’t seen yet. The game rangers are very knowledgeable about the animals, and you will learn a ton. We feel this is best if you are on your first few game viewing attempts or you want to find a specific animal. In the private reserves, they often are in radio communication with the other rangers and are more aware of where the animals are and what is going on. The only downside is that you are at the mercy of the group, when you don’t care about another nyala, but half the group hasn’t seen one… it can become lame.

Self Drive

Many of the parks and some reserves will allow you to self drive on certain roads. This can allow you do view game very inexpensively and you only see what you want to see. There is no group of people that dictating what your vehicle is hanging out to watch. This is also very cool, because you are the leader of your own game viewing adventure, and most of the roads that we were on where easily passable with our VW hatchback. The downside to this is that you don’t have an experienced guide with you to rattle off all the interesting facts about the animals you see. I would highly recommend a guided drive first until you learn a bit about the animals and how they react to vehicles.

A Stake Out

The problem with drive viewing is that the animals all see the cars and will act differently. Game viewing on the drives often becomes an awkward stare down between the animal and the vehicle. In order to see the animals acting natural you must sit and watch. Some guided drives may do this to view certain animals, but it was really easy to dictate our own schedule when we had a private guide or did a self drive. One day at Tembe Elephant Park we sat for almost four hours in the same hide and got to see a ton of interesting things. Water Bucks fighting and elephants cooling off without a care.

I recommend the guided drives first, because you can learn a ton. Once you have animal smarts feel free to go out on your own. We were so glad that we did some self drives and stake outs. Always respect the animal though! Never underestimate the power of anything and always be aware of what the animals might be thinking.