Most lodges in private game reserves, in the period around lunchtime between the two usual daily game drives, offer guests the chance to go on a short safari walk. The focus on these is not the game you’d see on drive. Instead you’ll concentrate on learning about the trees and plants, including their various uses in bush medicine and bush craft. You’ll also have the chance to look at the much, much smaller animals like spiders and millipedes, no less worthy of your attention than the bigger animals in the reserve! Some of the private reserves offer a more intensive walking safari experience, where you’ll walk for large parts of a day through the bush, or even for a couple of days, camping out. Sometimes these will be to walk with cheetahs, which seem particularly comfortable being accompanied or tailed by humans; other times it will just be about the thrill of spending protracted amounts of time on foot in what has become an alien and fascinating environment for modern man, never knowing what is around the next corner, and really getting the chance to understand and appreciate nature. At the public restcamps in the Kruger National Park, daily safari walks are operated by the parks board and can be booked on to when you arrive. If you want to spend the majority of your time doing walking safaris, then you should consider the Rhino Post safaris, where two-day walking safaris can be done, with overnight sleep-outs.
