Bothongo Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve

Bothongo Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve tickets and tours: which one to book

The Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve, which now trades under the name Bothongo, is a privately owned, fenced game park in the Kromdraai valley, within the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, about forty-five minutes to an hour by road north-west of Johannesburg, in the direction of Krugersdorp and Lanseria airport, and a little more from Pretoria. It is the easiest place for a visitor with half a day in Johannesburg to see African animals, and it is honest to say what it is: not a wilderness, and not a substitute for Kruger or Pilanesberg, but a large drive-through park, part game reserve and part zoo, designed for families. The entrance ticket, bought online or at the gate, admits a private car, and visitors drive themselves on a circuit of gravel roads, easy in an ordinary vehicle, through the open game area, where antelope, zebra, wildebeest, buffalo, hippos and rhinos graze, and then, through sets of double gates, into separate enclosures for lions, wild dogs and cheetahs, with windows closed;

feeding times at the predator camps, on certain days, draw the crowds. Guided game drives in open vehicles, which explain far more, can be booked at additional cost, as can horse rides and, on some days, behind-the-scenes tours. In the middle of the reserve is an area of smaller enclosures, a reptile park and a nursery of young animals, with restaurants and picnic and braai sites beside a pool. The reserve also has chalets and a lodge for those who stay the night, and the Wonder Cave, within its boundary, is visited on a guided tour. The tours from Johannesburg combine it with the Sterkfontein caves or the Maropeng visitor centre.

Visiting Bothongo Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve: what you will see

The reserve was founded in 1985 by Ed Hern, a Johannesburg stockbroker, on a worn-out farm of about two hundred hectares, which he stocked with two white rhinoceros bought from the Natal parks board; it has grown to about 1,600 hectares of highveld grassland and rocky, bush-covered dolomite ridges, at about 1,500 metres, and holds more than six hundred head of game of some thirty species, remained for decades in the hands of his family, and was renamed Bothongo when it passed to new owners. White rhinos have bred well here, and with buffalo, hippos in the dams, eland, sable and roan antelope, gemsbok, red hartebeest, blesbok, springbok, black and blue wildebeest, waterbuck, zebra, giraffe, warthogs and ostriches they live free in the main area. The predators are kept apart: lions, among them the pale-coated white lions for which the reserve is known, a rare colour form, not albino, which arose among the lions of the Timbavati region beside Kruger and survives mainly in captivity;

cheetahs, of both the normal and the blotched king pattern; African wild dogs, which breed here; and, in smaller camps, leopards, Bengal tigers, which are not African at all, jaguars, pumas, hyenas and servals. The reserve takes part in breeding programmes for wild dogs, cheetahs and the Cape vulture, for which it keeps a feeding station. In recent years it has stopped the cub-petting for which such parks are criticised. Wonder Cave, discovered by limestone miners in the 1890s, is a single huge chamber reached by a lift and stairs, with stalactites, stalagmites and rimstone pools some of which are still growing. The setting matters: the dolomite of the Kromdraai and Sterkfontein valleys has yielded more fossils of early human ancestors than any comparable area on earth, among them Mrs Ples and Little Foot at Sterkfontein, a few kilometres away, and the two skeletons of Australopithecus sediba found at Malapa, on a neighbouring property, in 2008.

Bothongo Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve: best time to go, seasons and hours

The reserve is open every day of the year, from 8 am to 5 pm, with the last entry about an hour before closing. The highveld winter, from May to August, is dry, sunny and cold in the mornings, with brown, short grass in which the animals are easy to see, and is the better season; summer, from October to March, is warm and green, with violent afternoon thunderstorms. Go early, when the predators are active and before the weekend families arrive;

the lions spend the middle of the day asleep. Weekends, public holidays and school holidays are busy. Keep windows closed and doors locked in the predator camps, and stay in the car. Allow three to four hours. The Sterkfontein caves and the Maropeng visitor centre are fifteen minutes away, the Lesedi cultural village twenty minutes, and the Hartbeespoort dam half an hour north.