South Africa's climate, beaches and vineyards are all popular tourist attractions. But it is the big five that people really come to see - the elephants, rhinos, lions, leopards and buffalo in the great game reserves.

Kruger National Park is visited by almost three quarters of a million tourists a year. Only five per cent of it is accessible to visitors, yet it is still not crowded. The park is home to white and black rhinos, lions, elephants, and thousands of other species of birds, animals and plants, living wild on the bushveld. Although the park is almost half the size of Denmark, the numbers of some animals, such as lions and elephants, have to be controlled by culling. This causes controversy among conservationists. Both elephants and rhino are in danger of becoming extinct in some places, because of hunting by poachers. Rather than cull herds when numbers grow too great, it is sometimes possible to move them to other parks.

There are nature reserves in all of the country's many different geographical areas, from sub-tropical forest to the Kalahari desert. Whales can be seen off the West Coast National Park; for energetic hikers there are long trails in the semi-desert Karoo Nature Reserve, inhabited by many different species of antelope. Hippopotamus (and almost every other kind of African wildlife), can be seen in the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve, in the east of the country, north of Durban.

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