Kruger National Park Camps

It took time to work out time frames and camps for the park and in true Cooper style we have ended up changing our itinerary whilst here; Week one I hear my dad saying and already she is changing her plans! It's just one of those things - you have to adapt to get the best experience. I'll tell you a little about the camps we stayed in, why we chose them and then eventually I'll get to the real reason we came...the wildlife!

Our first camp was called Berg-En-Dal and is located in the south of Kruger. It is set amongst rocky terrain and was, if i'm honest, not quite what I had pictured Kruger to be like - the plains of the Lion King it is not! The camp itself has all you need and would expect and also has all of the things included in our bungalow that I had previously been convinced by others that I would need. We leave the park tomorrow and to this day I have not used any utensils, plates, cutlery or loo roll among the million other things I was convinced to purchase in Hazy View. Family wise it had a pool and laundry which cost 50p for a full wash and dry.

The second camp was Talamati. Talamati is special in that it is a bush camp and therefore much more remote with just 15 bungalows, no shop, no phone signal...in fact not much of anything. Well apart from the score of amazing animals that we encountered which made it a great choice. It was hard to get to but that was mainly due to the weather and conditions on our day of travel; torrential rain, back roads with no phone reception and wild animals do not make for a pleasant 7 hour journey. We spent three nights at Talamati, which for us with a child of five was maybe one night too many (Roman still likes to be able to go swimming and the 8 hour daily drives started to grind him down.)

We were then due to head north to Olifants, but upon doing a little further reading and also desperate for our Leopard sighting we managed to change to two nights at Satara Camp. Satara was a fantastic camp for us as a family. The staff were amazing, Faith on reception was wonderful even after we had monkeys trash our place of rest. There is a children’s play park and an amazing pool perfect for cooling down or tiring out children. It is a camp known for its cat sightings and it did not disappoint...more about that later.

The final Camp was Lower Sabie, dream camp and very hard to get into, we struck lucky for one night. It has a pool, laundry and an amazing viewing deck overlooking the dam where you can watch the Hippos, Crocs and huge array of birdlife 24/7. It had an amazing waterhole 500 metres down the road where we got our best Hippo views. It was just a little sad that we only found the place on the last stretch of out time in Kruger.

So that's the camps, next update the WILDLIFE.