How to Plan a Luxury African Safari for Less in Kruger National Park and Victoria Falls

taking a luxury Safari to Krueger National Park in South Africa was very high on our bucket list it's been there since we were children so we wanted to get it right not cut corners and have a spectacular experience seeing wildlife in their natural habitat in the end we did exactly that we spent a week in Krueger and added a week-long trip to Victoria Falls two action-packed weeks one of the biggest misconceptions and planning an African safari is that you need to book through a tour operator to get the best experience while we aren't opposed to this plan we just believed that we could book a great Safari if we could figure out all the steps today we're going to tell you how we did it cutting out the middleman creating a bucket list worthy trip with flexibility to do what we wanted to do when we wanted to do it all the while saving thousands of dollars we're going to show you all of our choices and share all of our costs so while it may sound a bit complicated on the surface it is not trust us when we tell you that if we can do it so can you so let's get started we're John and Bev and we are the retirement Travelers if you're just finding us we are full-time senior travel bloggers and we have created a companion travel guide to this video on our website retirement travelers.com we will leave a link to this guide in our description we've included all the information we talk about today so after the video click on the link to read Our God while you're on our site be sure to sign up for our newsletter and if you're wondering where we are when we travel we keep our Instagram updated to our current location so go there and follow along with us this week we will reach our goal of visiting 100 countries and we're looking forward to this travel milestone first let us say as we've said many times we are not budget Travelers but rather bargain Travelers we are always on the hunt for great experiences for Less we like a luxury experience but we want to know we are spending our money where it matters visiting Africa for Safari is not budget friendly no matter how you go about it but since it's truly one of those most fabulous bucket list experiences we wanted to do it in style for a lot less now a lot of people began their South African travels in Cape Town and that is what we did we spent a month there and we think it's one of the most beautiful cities in the world so if you were fortunate enough to add this stop to your itinerary go for it another item to note is that if you're doing a safari in Krueger National Park you should consider adding a visit to Victoria Falls The Falls are located on the border of Zimbabwe where we stay in Zambia it's an easy flight from Johannesburg and many tour companies include this side trip when planning a safari for you but this like our safari was easy to plan without using a tour operator in fact we feel we had a better experience by going it alone and we certainly saved a lot of money by booking it all direct we stayed at the pamara lodge which was wonderful in every way their link is in our companion article they helped us arrange a safari on land and water to Botswana to visit chobi National Park a sunset dinner cruise on the zimy river and also a traditional dinner at the local restaurant dusty road Township experience the owners of pomara were helpful and we highly recommended their Lodge while at pomara we met some fellow independent Travelers Michael and bernardet who joined us on our visit to the falls and we will always remember our day spent with them and cherish the memory so there are a few things you need to know about booking a safari experience on your own in Krueger National Park you know we're sure we're going to get plenty of naysayer travel agents who will say that by not using a tour operator or a travel agent to book your foregoing experts who know what they're doing now we're not saying that isn't true but for us this experience was just one more example where it is possible to do it yourself we like traveling independently and this was a great way for us to save a ton of money the next thing that you should know is that there are self-driving opportunities by rening a car staying in lowcost homestays or motels but we didn't want this experience we wanted a luxury experience great food and game drives that we didn't have to organize ourselves the next thing you need to know when booking a place is that some lodges are located ated within a fenced complex which they sometimes call a reserve now sometimes these are very high-end but they're not always open to the national park and the game drives stay within this fencon area the animals are predictable but they aren't free to leave and live their lives as you would expect when coming to a safari we wanted to see animals in their natural habitat and not fenced in like they were you know in a zoo our stay was in a reserve but it was not fenced in and it was open to Krueger National Park the first logistical issue we faced was figuring out how to get to the park Krueger is a massive area of 7500 square miles this is the equivalent of the state of New Jersey there are three airports that service the park and once you pick a location to stay you must turn around and figure out how to get to it we flew direct from Cape Town to Hod spr on airlink we should add the choosing good Airlines is always a hard decision no matter where you travel because many countries have regional carriers that just as a foreigner you just don't know much about we did some research and went with airlink it helped that they flew direct to this Airport from Cape Town but we didn't have any experience with them before our trip well this Airline turned out to be one of our favorite regional carriers we've ever encountered they have a history of being on time and their customer service with outstanding the jet planes were topnotch and offered more leg room in economy than we usually get in the states when booking your Safari don't hesitate to use them the cost of our flight from Cape Town to hosu was $175 each the airport in Hur is very small but big enough to land jet airplanes you know we thought our airlink flight might be a propeller plane but it was a jet this airport handles a lot of passengers and while small by our standards the only real difference was the conveyor built that handles your luggage now it was not existent the bags were placed on a wooden platform and you just walked up and grabbed them the next decision we had to make was how to get to the camp we booked we chose to use honeyguide tinted Safari manab beanie camp and it was located about an hour from the airport we reached out to the lodge and they arranged for us to be picked up at the airport using a local transport we paid $1150 for the roundtrip journey and we thought this was incredibly reasonable given that they had such great vehicles and such a nice driver we saw so many animals that I teased him that we should call he should call his company Safari from the airport he just laughed now our camp was in the manuli private game reserve and it wasn't fenced in and it was adjacent and open to Krueger National Park so when walking around we had to be very mindful of the animals you know no no r no runs in the evening for me now we only saw antalope elephants and monkeys in the camp but it was possible to see others so we kept a lookout when walking to and from the lodge you know one of the best parts of this Camp was the elephants they frequented the swimming pool and there was an overflow area where they could come and get a drink every day you know they did this and it was a highlight for everyone staying there it was one of the reasons we book this Camp honey guide has 15 tents and each tent is located a short distance from the main building or Lodge the lodge is where you come for all three meals we sat at the same table each time and the people we ate with were the people we share the game drive jeep with so we had an opportunity to get to know everyone now the food was outstanding and we ordered from a menu at each meal now we were usually given a couple of options for lunch and dinner and and several for breakfast the kitchen staff was wonderful and the meals were all included in our cost we'll also add that they do have internet at the lodge and we didn't have any in our tent but the seating area up there was beautiful and open to the outside so we didn't mind sitting at the lodge and watching the elephants and monkeys our tent was very nice much nicer than we imagined this was a very sturdy permanent tent with a bathroom and shower the bed had a mosquito net but while we were there in April we didn't see any mosquitoes We Believe April is the perfect time for this experience it wasn't hot and we slept very comfortably now let us add here we took malaria medication but we aren't really sure it was necessary you know we like to be proactive with our health and since we were going to Victoria Falls in Botswana we thought we'd go ahead and take it now we've been asked if we had any side effects and we did not one of the features of this Camp is that they included two G drives each day because we were there for a week we skipped some of them and if we had to do it again we'd probably just stay for four nights and not seven seven nights gave us 14 game drives so we skipped them if we anticipated a lot of Rain the game drives took place from 6:00 to 9: each morning and again from 4:00 to 7: in the evening they were always to different places and our driver made every attempt to get us into the areas where the animals had been spoted spotted you know we stopped for coffee or snacks each time and we saw the most amazing sunrises and sunsets we were very surprised that we only saw at the most probably 8 to 10 other Jeeps on these long drives you know with over 124 miles of roads to drive in the 88 square mile area it was never crowded the reserve is a big five game area with over 300 species of birds we were able to see four of the five the leopard was a little shy while we were there but we had just seen one on our Shir Lanka trip so we were okay with that of course there is no guarantee of what you will see but overall we saw lots of animals within this 88 square mile Reserve there are five lodges in total so it was not crowded like other reserves adjacent game drives was something that we assumed we could only get through a tour operator but the truth is that game drives are done by the camp or the lodge not the tour operator this experience comes with the cost of your stay so to us this was an important distinction that we realized tour operators have no control over your drives or which animals you see or where you go other than picking a lodge the lodge knows the area and while many tours we take around the world are done by a tour operator game drives are not you know even if you book through the operator it is not guaranteed that they will accompany you on these drives we will leave a link for this Lodge honey guide tented Safari in our companion guide we ended up paying about $500 a night for two and we thought this was well worth the cost for this luxury experience if you have any questions leave a comment below and we will try to answer them also don't forget to add a trip to Victoria Falls to round out your African experience if this guide has helped you please hit sub subscribe and we'll see you next time be sure to hit subscribe and follow along on our retirement Journey around the world

Channel: Retirement Travelers

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Id: mURrAh4UAtU

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2024