Kruger National Park Travel Forum

We are going to Kruger and our friend who is South African has booked the following. If anyone has stayed in any of these, we would appreciate any feedback:
Lower Sabie Rest - Safari Tent
Olifants Rest Camp - Bungalow
Letaba Rest Camp -Bungalow
SAtara Rest Camp -bungalow
Also what is the difference between hut, safari tent and bungalow?
Thanks

Hut: A structure/building with only one room. To cook, you share a kitchen with other hut dwellers. For ablutions, you share that with others as well.

Tent: Same as above, but made of canvas.

The facilities in huts/tents are are beds, a cupboard, table and chairs, fridge and electric fan.

Bungalow: Round-walled African style units with thatched roof. 2 or 3 beds per unit, equipped with en-suite ablutions (most with showers, but some with baths). Most units have air-conditioning. Kitchenettes vary: some have hotplates and sinks, some have only sinks, while some have neither. Cutlery and crockery may be provided or can be hired from reception. Visitors should confirm all of the above when booking.

See here for all the info:
http://www.sanparks.org/tourism/accommodation

By the way, they are all very well maintained and cleaned daily. No dirt floors - either painted cement or tiles. Bedding is in excellent condition. Windows an doors are rodent/reptile proof. They all have electric lighting and power points. You would have to search hard to find complaints about the accommodation, but I think that one VT'er had a bat problem.

We toured SA in Sept 2006, from Pretoria to Cape Town by Mercedes Overlander for 3,500KM, & stayed at chalets throughout the 3 week journey. Kruger was covered in 3 days, staying at chalets. Accomodation varied from huts to big air-conditioned self-contained apartments. Shukuza, Huluwali, Niemsiella, Umfulozi, and a few other names come to mind. The most exotic was one where we stayed in "beehive huts"- round thatched roofed structures with brick extensions for individual bathrooms & toilets. The "door" was just a sliding wooden piece that locked from the outside, & we had to lodge a heavy bag there to prevent outsiders from coming in. Most cooking facilities were available.
KC

Amazingly drkcgoh lives in the future: We toured SA in Sept 2006?

I stayed at KNP in August of 2005 and had a GREAT experience. Can not wait to go back some day. Anyways We stayed in Lower Sabie (hut), Satara (bungalow), Oliphants (bungalow), Tamboti (safari tent) and Skuzua (safari tent) and loved them all but Skuzua. Gerald described them all in the above post so I won't get into that. We felt safe the entire time in the camp. The staff were very kind.

Many say Oliphants is the prettiest camp. Lower Sabie has a nice eatery and there is a river situated on the out skirts of the camp where you can watch the hippos. Satara is more flat, but wonderful. We saw many lions around this area. I did not stay at Letaba. Our favorite accomadation were the safari tents actually, because it just felt like what you should do on a safari!

We did one morning drive with a guide, which is lots of fun. It allows you to get on the roads during dark. Each camp I believe (maybe not the smaller ones) have activities such has drives, walks and braais that you can sign up for. I believe Oliphants has a mountain biking adventure of some sort.

Every where we stayed was very clean also...I think I wrote about the different places in my pages...

Have fun.

All the camps/facilities you mentioned are clean and well maintained. Oliphants was our favorite. There is a bike tour offered at Oliphants as well as a "star-gazing/constellation" tour. We did the bike tour and had a great time but missed out on the stargazing. We were told it was great by some other travelers that we met while at Oliphants. If you want to do some of the activities offered you can book them in advance on line at the SANParks website. The bike tours are small groups and I think the stargazing is also a smallish group as they have only 1 (maybe 2 by now) large telescopes that are shared among the group.