How to Safari on a Budget: South Africa Safari Guide
Have you been dreaming of that perfect trip to Africa where you wake up to the sound of a lion roaring and fall asleep to the footsteps of elephants? I’m guessing if so, you’ve done a few google searches and seen the astronomical prices that an African safari can ensure. I’m talking THOUSANDS of dollars for just a few nights. Trust me, I’ve been there too and I didn’t think there would be a cheap way to safari. After lots and lots of research, I was able to find a way to safari on a budget and I’m so excited to share it with you.
I’ve traveled to South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe and did safaris in both South Africa and Botswana. Finding information on traveling to this part of the world can be a struggle and I spent more hours than I’d like to talk about Googling, watching YouTube videos, talking to people I’d met who were from South Africa, and joining Facebook groups just to get answers to what I thought were pretty basic questions.
The absolute cheapest country to safari in is South Africa at Kruger National Park. You might be thinking, “but Grace Ann, I’ve looked at the prices of the lodges there and they are soooo expensive.” And you would be right. The lodges there are so expensive but what you might not know about is that you can stay in the park through South Africa National Parks. By doing this, you can rent a car and self-drive your safaris, saving you thousands of dollars.
On their website, you can head to the “Where to Stay” section and click on Kruger National Park. You can then view all the different rest camps that they have inside of Kruger. Through checking availability, you can see which ones have availability for the dates you are looking at and you can book directly through this website. They have loads of different options with varying budgets in mind. For a cabin with a toilet and air-conditioning, it’s typically about $80USD/night. It doesn’t get much cheaper than that. They also have options to just get a campsite for $23USD/night.
When I visited, we spent 5 nights inside Kruger and based our Safari route off of where we would be staying that night. We stayed in 3 different rest camps- 1 night in Berg-En-Dal (which I recommend spending your first night there because it’s close to the entrance), 1 night at Pretoriuskop, and 3 nights at Skukuza.
Every rest-stop is equipped with stores where you can buy snacks, toiletries, and souvenirs as well as at least one restaurant. In our experience, all the food was surprisingly amazing (minus Pretoriuskop, if you are staying there, I recommend grilling out that night.) Most of them also have gas stations on site so that you can fill up before your big day out in nature.
Another little secret I’m going to tell you about is that you don’t have to self-drive all of your safaris. Many people will tell you the best way to see cats in the park is either through a night drive or a sunrise drive, neither of which you can do self-driving due to gate entry and exit times. Each lodge lets you book safaris in open-air vehicles where you can do these types of safaris for only $25USD! Because it was so cheap, we did 2 night drives and 1 sunrise drive. During our second night drive, we were right up close to a pride of lions and during the sunrise one, we got to check off the final of the big 5 where we got to spot a leopard!
I never once felt like I was missing out on the “safari experience” by self-driving and with the option to do guided safaris as well, we truly had such an amazing experience. We rented our car through Around About Cars and had a great experience. We had the car for about 2 weeks and took it all through the coast of South Africa and into Kruger for our safaris.
