HGOLI

I paid 780 rand for one night with breakfast. Their 'Deck' is right on the Crocodile River, location is v. good.

SanDiego1K

HGOLI, nice pictures. What property is this? I scrolled upthread but wasn't sure.

HGOLI

SanDiego, this is a place I stayed in for one night, at Malelane, just 10 (not even) minutes from Malelane Gate, before I entered the park at 0600 the following morning to stay at Lower Sabie etc. Ideal for me, as I had driven up from Swaziland.

The hotel is called Rio Vista. If you search on Booking.com or whatever, it shows up. This photo is taken from the hotel and is of the Crocodile River that borders Kruger and Rio Vista.


The other photos are from Skukuza and Lower Sabie restcamps.

StartinSanDiego

I'm booked! Going RTW for the first time... first to Spain/France to look at the cave painting in the north, then fly to JNB, then HKG, then home.

I booked 3 nights at Olifants. Unfortunately, the river view and view rooms were already gone for my dates in May 2018. So, in answer to the OP's question, book as soon as you can! I also booked 2 night drives and a River Walk. We will do self driving in the daytime, and be at catered luxury camps both before and after Olifants, so I didn't book any camp sponsored sunrise or sunset drives.

Has anyone done the camp sponsored Braai? I hope I spelled that right... I think I heard that Olifants offers those. What's the procedure for joining?

johan rebel

I would never pay extra for a river view room.

The restaurant and viewing deck are within easy walking distance of all rooms, and the latter has better views than any room, entirely for free.

Johan

johan rebel

Bush Braais offered from camps

Johan

Happy

The Letaba camp has prettier surroundings. There are "resident" animals wondering around the camp.

On our way driving up about 15 to 20 min to arrive the camp we saw our first rhino just behind the busy by the tarred road.

We had lunch at Oliphants. View is good but not very impressed probably due to the very very dry conditions last year.

The official speed is 40 or 50 kmh. Much slower than what you remember. However everyone does some speeding in some stretch of the roads. Just dont ever do it near Skukuza camp and the exit - that is where they place speed gun and catch a lot of cars.

Happy

The current price in Aug 2017 is USD100 for no view (2 persons) and USD104 for river view.
Single person USD60.

For those who have Marriott points, the Protea Kruger Gate is only 100 meters to Kruger Gate. Property is currently a Cat 1, 7500 Marriott points. Extremely cheap for redemption especially if you have SPG pts to transfer at 1 to 3 ratio. IIRC a while back SPG had a bonus on purchasing points - making the cost per point to just about 0.02. At 0.02 you need 2500 SPG pts so it is $50 to get one night at Protea.

Because it is so cheap to stay at Protea, and because we have tried the rest camps last year, this year we decide we would just stay at Protea for all 3 nights.

Happy

If you booked the camp over the phone, you can check back as often as you like to see if the cabin availability changes. The availability does change because there are always cancellation when people booked so early. Last year I booked our camps over the phone and subsequently changed them a lot including dropping the beginning and ending dates as well as changing camp/bungalow types - all done online before the final payment. Each change online actually extended the payment deadline by another 30 days!

I agree with Johan that there is no need to book the perimeter at Oliphants.

The cave painting viewing part in Spain and France sound intrigue.

You would enjoy doing RTW - it is the more efficient way to travel, especially in long haul flights. We will be heading out in August for this year's 3rd RTW - 35 days, 3 Continents.

I will need to figure out what to do with UA's upcoming chart changes in Nov. Want to use the sweet spot that is Asia-Australia, on TG F one more time. I will work on it after we come home from this trip in mid Sept. Once again it would be using multiple programs. Just hope AA would work out the current issues with QR though we probably only need to use the Europe to Asia (or South Pacific) but nothing to/from US that are currently plagued with the non-confirmation issues.

Happy

I would suggest you check flight schedules before doing more detailed planning of your trip.

I doubt you would find direct flight from George or Port Elizabeth to Nelspruit without having to go thru JNB.

The more logical route if it is me who is doing it, would be fly to JNB - pick up a car and then return the car at JNB. Then fly from JNB to either Victoria Falls or Livingstone. Comair (BA's 100% owned sub) operates direct flights from JNB to both locations IIRC. Great value for Avios redemption if you find availability.

Rental cars at CPT, JNB and PLZ are quite reasonable. Dont know about other smaller airports and Nelspruit definitely is a much smaller one than PLZ, not to mention MQP.
Also keep in mind some of those smallish airports only have props which seriously limit luggage capacity - both piece and weight.

Really, you need to check out the flight situation first - NOT just from the map and how it looks more logical to you for the route you prefer - BUT for the Reality - how the flight schedule / cost would be and then find a compromise to accommodate your desired route.

Another consideration is, even if you do not care for the costs (but obviously you do), the flight schedule may be very infrequent, may only be one flight a day - should that flight has any issue, chances are, you would need to wait to the next day or the day after, to continue your journey. But you definitely would not have this risk at the major airports such as CPT and JNB.

Right now we would be flying the one per day BA flight PLZ to DUR and I worry a bit about the reliability of its schedule because anything goes wrong, it would be next day's flight. All our bookings are fully cancellable from hotel to rental car at Durban so we would not lose anything but it would still be a hassle to rearrange everything.

I would bet you have a sticker shock on the flights and rental car costs based on your current proposal versus using JNB as your "hub" so to speak.

johan rebel

Yes, but you can encounter speed traps anywhere. They do have a number of favorite spots (with enough shade trees and bushes to hide the cop car, preferably at the base of a hill, and with a suffiently long stretch of straight road that tempts drivers to let their vehicle gain speed coming down the hill), but you get to know these after a while.

A really nasty one is the high bridge over the Shingwedzi River, which has a speed limit of 20 kph. They catch 'm by the bushel there.

They main problem with the speed traps is that there are not enough of them by far.

Johan

johan rebel

To all practical intents and purposes, Nelspruit is MQP.

The city of Nelspruit has two airports, NLP and MQP. When the latter was built, all commercial flights were transfered there.

Johan

invisible

Obviously.

To my view, this is not optimal from routing/miles/time perspective. Please consider that I most likely will have reward flights booked, (revenue flights will be >$2000 in Economy). Departure/Return points are TBS and SIN. Now what would be arrival point - JNB, CPT, PLZ or MQP - that will determine award routing and miles required.

Booking Star Alliance award ticket with SQ allows open jaw and $100 per stopover. So I am thinking of for the first route:
TBS-...-CPT as a destination and then George/Port Elizabeth (open jaw)-Kruger (first stopover)-Victoria Falls (second stopover)-TBS

For the second route with SIN departure it can be SIN-CPT (destination)-JNB (open jaw)-SIN. And I need to book George/Port Elizabeth-Kruger-Victoria Falls-JNB either with UA miles, or with revenue ticket...

JNB-Kruger-JNB is 10 hours drive - one day is lost in driving...

Idea is travel with carry-on luggage only.

Don't disagree with you. A lot of restrictions are there...
Already been to South Africa Feb this year. Agree with flights. Car rental was relatively cheap, but would look for an alternative of AVIS, if possible...

johan rebel

Sure, but . . .

- you may spend several hours in transit at JNB, or even longer, depending on where you are coming from, and where you are flying too.

- it may take you several hours to reach your destination in Kruger, depending on which airport you fly to, and where you are staying.

MQP is a poorly situated airport from a Kruger perspective, it is not really close to anywhere in the park.

Johan

StartinSanDiego

To drive or fly, that is the question!

I agree with Johan, by the time you wait for the connecting flights, it's often a wash as far as time goes. I consider it personal taste or travel style- I'll often opt for the short connecting flight, Mr. San Diego wants to get out of the airport asap and enjoys driving. He likes being on the move and seeing the sites, even if just the nature of the terrain or towns along the freeway as you blaze down the road to the destination.

For this trip- I'm taking the car and driving to Graskop the first night. The car serves as sort of a mobile unit... we tend to settle in and get comfortable.