In my opinion you have to drive this road as early as possible, due to the High volumes of traffic {especially during public holidays}. We've had Lion sightings on most of our trips down this road. Last December they were often seen at the Tablets.
In 2005 a pride of Lions took down a Giraffe about 50 - 100m after the turn off to the road linking the H4-1 and the H1-2. We were at Nkulu picnic site when people told us about what they witnessed

. It happened at about 08:30 in the morning. They took the Giraffe down in the road and it caused major traffic congestions in all 3 directions.
We also try not to miss Maroela Loop as we had magnificent Lion, Leopard and Wild Dog sightings on this little loop. Sometimes it's full of sightings and sometimes there's NONE! We've even had it without an Impala on the loop!

Our very first Lion sighting in the park was on Maroela loop back in 2004, maybe that's why this road is so special to me
We also managed to see cheetah on H1-2 once and only two Leopard sightings.
We drive this road every year, but we prefer to rather drive the S36 and then the S34 towards Tshokwane as it's often very rewarding! We spent almost 3 hours with a coalition of 4 young male lions on the S34 without any cars joining us!

. They had a stare off with a herd of buffalo and we thought the we might be lucky but..... nothing happened!
{For the record, we also saw Sable at the S33 / S36 junction two years back, and I'm almost sure it wasn't Waterbuck as there was no ring on it's ..... and the animal was a completely different colour!

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