Yes, I double-booked. I found a better accommodation at Lower Sabie (it was so exciting!) and instead of changing my existing reservation, booked a second thinking I could cancel the first one. I can't! If anyone knows how to cancel and get your money back, I'd love the scoop.

Just as an aside, I think I might have to cancel the whole darned trip - my husband lost his job this morning. If he finds a job soon (I'm overly confident about that) we could still do the trip, but I doubt he'll be able to take an extended vacation with a new job. &$#!! Yes, I did the above bone head thing five minutes before he got home to give me his good news.

Oh jeez christabir, what horrible luck! I don't have any answers for you, I'm afraid, will just hope it all works out in the end for you.

I also have no solutions and can only echo what Kath said. Terrible luck.

If you can't seem to work it online, call them. I think these numbers are good -
011 27 11 678 8870 Joburg Resv or
011 27 12 428 9111 Cenral Resv
From USA dial exactly as shown.

Hope it all works out good for you.

regards - tom

Thanks all! I'll send an e-mail tomorrow and see what they say. If they say no, I'll call. I wonder if I can transfer the booking to someone else - a TA maybe? I got perimeter tents! See - I'm still excited. Unfortunately our reservation is for a holiday, so very low availability.

He already has the irons in the fire - great prospects - and keeping fingers crossed. He's got pretty marketable skills, so think he'll find something. Am I really this shallow that I'm more worried about a vacation than getting a job? At least my priorities are in order !

christabir, it seems to me if your res is for a low-availability holiday, you should be MORE able to cancel it because they're more likely to find someone to take your place -- you may have to wait to see if they do fill your spot, but still....

Good luck to your DH on the job hunt.

sf - I think so too, but they don't refund your money when you cancel. They know they'll be able to re-sell the space. It's already almost sold out on that date. If I had modified the reservation, they would have charged me for the higher rate room (which happens to be the original room). I think it's unreasonable, but I read the rules, and ticked the box, before I made the reservation. I'll try again.

Thanks for the good thoughts.

We have an office in Durban.
If you provide me with the camp name I will have our Durban office contact them, request their refund policy and see it we can assist.

christa - the same here.
We booked, canceled and booked another one.
Answer we got: NO REFUND!

So we could have slept in either camp - or at least could have ripped apart the linens ;-)

christabir, even as a tour operator we get no mercy and no refunds if things go wrong, so I'm not hopeful you will get anything back, but who knows. Good luck anyway. Post your available reservation(s) here and on other forums - maybe someone will be willing to take them over from you.
Onne from Wild Wings Safaris

Onne - thanks. I have the two reservations for the same dates at Lower Sabie for June 2011. It is almost fully booked - I'm sure someone would love to have a bungalow with a view. Can I transfer the booking to someone else? With this policy of no refunds, there must be quite a few empty accommodations when it shows as full. (like sv above).

Still hopeful we'll be taking the trip. If not, I'll have quite a few bookings available.

Thank you for an important lesson. We recently book a 10-night stay in Kgalagadi NP, and were not able to get two nights at Bitterpan Camp on the dates we wished. In the interim, we booked the two nights at Kalahari Tented Camp (KTC) in the hopes that, eventually, spots might open at Bitterpan. My plan, if that had happened, was two grab the two nights at Bitterpan and then cancel the two nights at KTC. I had not realized that this wasn't possible. Pity! Like you, I would have been stuck with reservations at two camps. Thanks for the head's up! Just to be clear, had Bitterpan become available, would I have been able to phone SAN Parks and switch the two camps? - as opposed to cancelling one and replacing it with another in two steps? Robin

Seems so strange that SANP would not give refund for cancelled reservations so I did some looking around the SANP web site. Found this –
http://www.sanparks.org/tourism/bookings/
and it refers to this -
http://www.sanparks.org/assets/docs/...icy_Trails.pdf

page 1 of latter says-
“The following conditions are only relevant to public reservations and not those made directly on the web via the online real time booking system (Refer to attached documentation).”
Firstly, "Public Reservations" are what/how made?? Then follows cancellation penalties for various cancellation times, e.g. 30 to 15 days before arrival 25%.

Here is (I think) the “attached documentation” referred to above regarding online booking
Page 4 says-
“Cancellations of reservations have to be processed directly with SANParks reservations. Note that the cancellation of a reservation made online will result in a full forfeiture of all payments made for that reservation.”

So, way I understand this is that if you make your reservations using online system you are stuck with it. But if you make your reservation using the telephone call in system then you can cancel and make changes, receiving refunds. Huh? Did I get this correct? When many businesses (airlines) are forcing us to use the internet, SA is discouraging its use?

Any local SA resident can confirm, correct or clarify this? We may be going again (fourth time) next year to Kruger.

regards - tom

FWIW, I put my above up on SANP web site forums -
http://www.sanparks.org/forums/viewt...p?f=74&t=48035
One reply so far says that is correct, reason being to prevent a tour operator from speculating, booking and holding a group of rooms or even whole camp.

regards - tom