Letaba Ranch Game Reserve

Letaba Ranch Game Reserve

The 42 000 hectare Letaba Ranch Game Reserve lies just north of Phalaborwa on the border of the Kruger National Park. The border between the two is unfenced allowing wildlife that includes the Big 5 to wander unhindered through the African bush.

Letaba Ranch Game Reserve, part of the Greater Kruger National Park conservation area, is particularly well known for sightings of elephant and buffaloes, and the mighty Letaba River that flows through the reserve provides a shelter to any number of hippos and crocodiles. Letaba, which means ‘river of sand’ in Sotho, is an apt description for the giver of life that provides an essential watering hole for animals on Letaba Ranch Game Reserve.

The best opportunities for spotting game usually exist along rivers, and Letaba is no exception, particularly as one of the river’s highlights is intermittent galleries of forest thick with sycamore figs, tambotis and sausage trees. You are more likely to spot the elusive leopard along a river bed, so keeping to the river is your best bet.

The Mtomeni Camp, based in the Letaba reserve, is part of The African Ivory Route - a particularly beautiful alternative that extends for 2 000 kilometres in an arc across the Limpopo Province, the northern reaches of South Africa. Its history lies in the paths taken by early ivory hunters and gold traders that criss-crossed those migratory routes adopted by elephants. Today 54 nature reserves combine into a wilderness that gives visitors who use the route an inspirational journey across mountain ranges, African bush and endless vistas.