Christmas is a good time for travel in South Africa. Most businesses and univisites close for an extended period and South Africans hit the parks or flock to the beaches. We often use the time to visit family in Europe, but 2020 was the corona year and nothing was as it used to be.

With most international travel on hold we decided to take advantage of the lack of foreign tourists and to spend our christmas break visiting some game parks. After all, self-catering, self-driving safari is a perfect activity for those who want to self-isolate and several camps still had vacancies on short notice. (In normal years most Kruger camps are booked solid over the holidays.)

We started out in Marakele with a few days of lazy lounging by the dam, then took in some history at South Africa's gold rush sites, and finally chased big game in Kruger.

For those of you who don't have patience to sit through 350+ safari shots check out the highlight reel in the last tab.