milneinc

We will be staying for four days at a cabin in Oliphants in Kruger National Park. Will we need to bring food from outside the camp and how well stocked is the camp store and how are the nearby restaurants? Also will I need misquito coils or bet netting? We will be there in mid Sept. and I would appreciate any info on Kruger or Oliphants itself.
Thanks
Judy

SAGirl1970

Judy, Oliphants has bedding at the camp you do not have to take your own bedding. As a mater of course you should always take mosquito repellent with you in south Africa, not just for Kruger. The camp does have a restaurant, but there are facilities if you want to cook for yourself, the stores are fairly well stocked but as you can imagine that becasue itis where it is and there is nothing else around they charge exhorbatant rates, so best to take what you want in with you!

Kavey

Having stayed at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi, Ithala, Berg en Dal and Olifants we found the restaurant at Olifants far and away the best of the bunch. It's about 85 Rand per person for a buffet meal. There was no a la carte when we were there in June but we were happier with buffet anyway.

The camp store stocks are a bit variable, if you go on a day when deliveries have been made you're fine, other times they have run out of many basic staples. In any case, choices are limited and prices are slightly higher than regular supermarkets.

We simply bought a coolbox and bought our food from regular supermarkets before entering the parks.

Cooking facilities are adequate for simple meals and don't forget there's a braai) outside each (SC) rondavel so you can BBQ too.

We particularly enjoyed the River Walk activity at Olifants but not so keen on the night drive, though that was down to our "guide" assuming his job was nothing more than to drive the vehicle around.

hanl

We managed to get everything we needed from the camp store at Olifants, although, like Kavey, we also noticed that the stock varied on different days (and at different times of day). Fresh produce was expensive and tended to run out quickly. We ate a lot of tuna sandwiches!

And like Kavey, we enjoyed the restaurant at Olifants (though I actually preferred the one at Berg en Dal), and thought it was excellent value. Had some nice wine there too!

One last thing - because the kitchens are open-sided at Olifants, make sure you turn your fridge round to face the wall, or wedge a chair against it at night, don't leave food out, and close the dustbin securely. Otherwise you may get a visit from baboons as we did - they found our sliced bread in the fridge, ate the middle part of each slice and threw the crusts all over the place! They caused greater havoc at the next-door bungalow, whose inhabitants hadn't securely stored away their food and woke up to find it strewn all over the kitchen! All part of the fun

Kavey

How funny, we liked the one at Berg en Dal least of all of the ones we tried. Mind you neither had a la carte so we're only comparing buffet to buffet here.

I am surprised Olifants don't fit the baboon proof locks to their fridge - they seem very effective at Mpila Camp.

lisa

For breakfast at Olifants we usually got breakfast sandwiches (egg, ham, cheese) from the little fast-food snack bar next to the store, and took them down to the viewing deck with our coffee and had breakfast overlooking the river, watching the elephants. It was great. For lunch we usually bought cheese, nuts, fruit, juice, etc. from the store at Olifants and brought it with us in a little cooler in the car and had a picnic at some point in the afternoon. Dinner we usually ate at the buffet restaurant at Olifants since you can't leave the camp after the gates close. The restaurant was OK, not great, but there was usually enough choice that you could find something good to eat.

We did not need mosquito coils or bed netting while we were there, but we usually closed the windows and ran the air conditioning at night because it was quite warm when we were there. I don't remember seeing any mosquitos indoors (did see a scorpion in our cabin though!). We did take malarone while we were there.

The store at Olifants is quite small but had a little of almost everything that one might want, including beer and wine and postcards and such.