It usually takes around 3 to 3.5 hours to drive from PE to Mountain Zebra Park
I’ve written about safaris before [here] and [here], but this trip to Mountain Zebra National Park was something different — wilder, more primal. It isn’t your average safari stop. Hidden outside Cradock in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, a few hours from my hometown, the park was created in 1937 to save the Cape mountain zebra, a species that nearly disappeared.
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Mountain Zebra National Park is a woodland, Karoo, or ‘bushveld‘ of South Africa. It’s characterized by thick shrubs, tangled trees, and a place where rain only falls once or twice a month.
Other habitats in Africa include savannah grasslands — the Serengeti and Maasai Mara — vast open plains dotted with acacia trees and crawling with herds of buffalo.
Farther north, in Namibia and the Kalahari, you’re standing in true semi-desert, where rain might fall only once or twice a year.
Trip Highlights
- Checked in to our chalet inside the park on a Saturday morning
- Stayed overnight
- Game drives all day Saturday and Sunday
All chalet options provide self-catering facilities, clothing, soap, daily servicing, and braai areas
At Mountain Zebra National Park, you can actually stay overnight inside the park in cozy chalets that look out toward the Bankberg mountains
Prices between $94–$111, depending on the season, typically based on 2 guests
Rates are per unit, additional charges may apply for extra occupants
The Baboons
You’ll see them everywhere, especially near the swimming pool as I soon found out!
Chacma baboons, the species found in Mountain Zebra National Park, are highly adaptable
In the wild, baboons don’t usually attack humans unless provoked
Swimming near them was special!
The Zebras
Cape mountain zebras are smaller, tougher, and their stripes are so sharp they almost look painted on. They slip in and out of the long grass like shadows, vanishing before you can count them. They’re the reason this park exists — and somehow, they seem to know it.
They have a distinctive dewlap (a flap of skin under the throat) — no other zebra has it
The Park Itself
More than 30,000 visitors come every year — drawn by the silence, the animals, and maybe the feeling that this place is older and stranger than it seems.
The secretary bird hunts on foot, stalking the grasslands and stomping snakes, lizards, and small mammals to death with lightning-fast kicks
Baboons’ number-one enemy is the leopard — an expert climber and ambush hunter that loves baboon on the menu
The black-backed jackal is one of the most common predators in Mountain Zebra National Park
Most visitors come from Europe, their safari dreams carrying them all the way to South Africa’s Karoo
If you’re birding (think secretary bird, martial eagle), go for 8×42. If you’re more into big game at longer distances (zebras, baboons on cliffs), 10×42 will thrill you
So tell me — would you stay the night in Mountain Zebra Park, or would you run?
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