This little village, with its colorful history, is probably the most picturesque and charming spot in the area. 
In 1873, Alec Patterson found alluvial gold in the stream which flows through the valley. The news spread like wild-fire and sparked off the world's biggest gold rush of the time. Before long, the town had twenty-one stores, three bakeries, various drinking halls and many other establishments.

Nowhere else in the world was gold ever mined in more beautiful and romantic surroundings. Mining continued until 1972 when the last operations ceased. 

Today Pilgrim's Rest is a living museum, preserved in the exact architectural style of the gold rush period, boasting various buildings, unchanged externally for more than a century. No visit to this area is complete without exploring the magic of Pilgrim's Rest AND TRYING YOUR HAND AT GOLD PANNING.

Chaos erupted when a rhino got stuck in the mud in a waterhole near a pride of lions and a herd of elephants tried to save it.

Having had no luck with their sightings, they were just about to leave the waterhole when a lioness stuck her head over the hill. The rest of her pride soon followed and made their way towards the waterhole. Hathway had a feeling that they were ready for action.

A few minutes later, a large black rhino came galloping over the same hill.

Hathway couldn’t believe her luck. At the time, the rhino didn’t seem to care about the nearby predators; it was too set on getting a drink, but the lions were aware of it.

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The UNESCO Sustainable Travel Pledge aims to promote sustainable travel, community resilience and heritage conservation globally. Signatories can learn about sustainable practices for their business, and together we can drive positive change in the travel industry for future travelers.

At Thokozani Lodge in White River, we are using a new PV system with solar pannels and battery storage system to avoid power loss during load shedding. Our system has been installed by our solar partner in White River, Power & Energy Solutions.

In a nutshell, home battery storage, or a solar battery, allows you to store electricity for use at a later time. Only few SA homes have solar PV panels which generate electricity during daylight. By adding a battery to the system, you can now use this energy in the evenings.

Photovoltaics as a success story

The development of photovoltaics often serves as an example for the anticipated development of the storage market: PV started as cost intensive technology in niche markets and is today, without doubt, in many cases competitive with conventional generation. Particularly, residential systems were and still are one of the pillars for the sustainable growth of PV. The transformation of power systems towards decentralized, renewable-based and sustainable models needs suitable instruments to face the volatile nature of several renewable sources. Therefore, storage seems to be a “natural” complement to decentralized PV systems. Residential privately owned storage systems could be a success story, especially as private purchasers' decisions often follow their own principles, despite political or other obstacles.

The more PV-produced energy used in a household, the better the economic viability of the system. Even though the gap between the electricity price and PV-generation costs is not big enough to finance the storage system, the expected increase in electricity prices in future and distrust towards utilities seems to help promoting storage.

In addition, the storage system acts as energy manager – if the PV supply is higher than the actual demand, the charging of the battery takes place. If it is lower, the battery provides the energy to supply demand. The integration of storage in PV systems gives the customer the feeling of self-dependency. Surely it will take some time to reach economic viability, but several factors such as declining system costs and increasing electricity costs already help.

Birding is a very popular extension of many visitors' purpose in visiting Kruger National Park.
Various parks host annual coordinated weekends of bird spotting activity where members of the public gather in parks and in teams or as individuals try and record as many different species in the park in approximately a 24-hour period.

The purpose of such designated birding weekends is to:

• Collect data on the avian (bird) species found in the given park
• To have a lot of fun watching birds and experiencing related Park activities
• To allow birders access to restricted or difficult to reach areas often at key times, such as dawn
• To expose and educate people about the wonders of Birding
• Allow beginner birders to interact with more experienced birders
• To raise money for various conservation projects that are beyond the limited budget of South African National Parks

Most of the SANParks birding events are organised by the various local regions of SANParks' Honorary Rangers who arrange things with the permanent staff of the affected parks. One should check the events page of the Honorary Rangers website for birding events not listed on the SANParks' website (http://www.sanparksvolunteers.org/events).

20th Kruger National Park Birding Weekends

The Kruger National Park Birding Weekends, facilitated by the West Rand Honorary Rangers, is one of the highlights on the annual birding calendar, and the biggest of these events, having been held annually at most of the camps in the park since 1999. Not only is Kruger Park one of the top birding areas in the country, it is a weekend of camaraderie between likeminded people, with birders from across the country descending on the park. The Rangers carefully select several difficult to access areas for the birding drives and normal gate times at the camps no longer apply, with drives leaving at three or four in the morning and arriving at wonderful birding spots by sunrise for the "dawn chorus".

West Rand Region are proud to invite you to their 20th Kruger National Park Birding Weekends. From a dream and a handful of guests in 1999, this event has grown to accommodating an average of 600 guests at 15 venues per annum. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance received from Sasol and Clover, our major sponsors from the inception of this event.

Guests can boost their birding skills and assist with vital conservation work. Enjoy dawn and evening drives, guided by experienced birding experts.
Choose whether to spend these birding weekends in either main camps and bushveld camps in the Kruger National Park. Prices range from R3 135 to R3 933 per person depending on the camp selected and the weekends offered are from the 26 January - 11 February 2018.

These events always rely on sponsors, but SASOL has been the primary sponsor for birding events for many years now.

Get more information about the Birding weekends!

Book your KNP accommodation now!

Kruger National Park (KNP) is currently implementing additional gate access control systems at its entrance gates in the Southern part of the Park, which will require that as from 1 September 2017, all visitors who are 18 years old and above must produce a positive identity document for scanning in order to gain access. For non-South African visitors, they must produce passports but a South African driver's licence will also be acceptable.

The new system will assist with monitoring of people's movement who enter and exit the Park, and will ensure that information related to any persons entering the park is centrally recorded and monitored.

"The system will apply to everybody including SANParks staff members, suppliers and other residents of the Park and is expected to improve on our proactive surveillance, early warning and detection. In our quest to continue to enhance security for both wildlife and visitors, we will continue to make use of appropriate security technology"; said the KNP's Managing Executive, Glenn Phillips.

Visitors will still be required to go through their normal check-in or check-out at the gate receptions before proceeding to the security scanning process. Training for the security personnel on the upgraded system is underway in order to minimize possible delays as soon as the new operation kicks-in.

We request that tour operators and ground handlers communicate this requirement with their guests.

"We recognise that we have to keep a very fine balance between imposing potentially anti-tourist friendly security apparatus whilst also ensuring the protection of both Tourists and Wildlife. We request the public to be patient during these very necessary security processes," concluded Phillips.

Issued by: SanParks

Thokozani Lodge has won the 2017 Top Valued Establishment Award! A big “Thank you” to all our guests!

Thokozani Lodge is very proud of this special achievement thanks to our guests who reviewed us. If you feel the same, book your accommodation now.

We're proud to announce Thokozani Lodge has got the Sleeping-Out Award 2015 for the Best Accommodation in White River, Mpumalanga:

Sleeping-OUT's Guest Satisfaction Award.
Based on reviews of establishments, Thokozani Lodge has been voted Best Establishment in White River for 2015.