Where to see the Cheetah in South Africa

Cheetahs hunt by daylight and by sight, which changes everything about how to look for them. They need open country to run in and they avoid the thick bush where lions and hyenas can ambush them, so the places to look are the grass plains and the dry riverbeds: the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in the Northern Cape, Phinda in Zululand, Madikwe and Pilanesberg in the North West, and the open eastern grasslands of the Kruger.

Unlike the cats that hunt at night, a cheetah is often up and moving in the middle of the morning, and it hunts in the cooler hours at either end of the day. Look at raised ground: termite mounds, fallen trees and riverbank edges are where a cheetah sits to scan. The dry season concentrates prey and thins the grass, which helps, but an open-country species is visible in any season the grass is short.

South Africa runs one of the most active carnivore conservation programmes in the world for this species, moving cheetahs between fenced reserves to keep the population genetically healthy, work the Endangered Wildlife Trust has led for years. Pair a cheetah trip with the rest of the Kalahari, or with a Zululand reserve where wild dog and rhino share the same ground.