The wife and I have been to Kruger a few times, including for our honeymoon.
last time we started off at
Xanatseni for a couple of nights before heading into Kruger where we stayed in a few different rest camps but didn't go further north than Olifants. We've been up to Punda Maria a few times which is much quieter both in terms of other people but also animals. The last few nights were spent at
Shalati.
Xanatseni was great, better than we were expecting. It's a very small camp which almost seems too good to be true when you see the prices compared to other private camps. Couldn't fault it. We spent a really memorable evening sitting on the viewing platform watching a pride of lions at the watering hole that's just outside the camp entrance.
The SANParks camps are fine, they seem to attract negative comments but I've never had reason to complain. They're fairly basic, but they're always clean and comfortable. I think Olifants is probably our favourite, out hut was in a great location so we had a spectacular view. There's loads of different types of accommodation, they give each time a code so pay attention when booking and it's well worth paying the extra to get a perimeter location.
Shalati was absolutely amazing. We stayed in a train carriage on the bridge which had very good views over the river. Food was exceptional, I thought it'd be good but it easily surpassed our expectations.
We like the combination of self drive and driven viewing.
Each time we've been we've flown into Johannesburg and driven over, it's about 5.5 hours to Kruger. It's an easy journey but finding a toll plaza that only took cash or South African debit cards wasn't ideal - we had to be turned around to go back the way we came to find a cash machine.
