Shingwedzi Rest Camp is in the northern region of Kruger National Park and set on the banks of the Shingwedzi River.
There are five types of accommodation to stay at in Shingwedzi. Choose between camping, huts and bungalows and from a cottage and a guest house.
If you’re staying at Shingwedzi, you have the chance of going on a morning game walk or a morning, sunset or night game drive. Both of these activities are lead by Kruger Park rangers.
In addition to these activities, you could also take part in a bush breakfast or bush braai (BBQ). If you go on either of these, you get to go on a game drive and eat a meal at a specially chosen location in the midst of the savannah!
If you’d like some entertainment without leaving the rest camp, wildlife films are shown every evening at Shingwedzi except Sundays. What a lovely relaxing way to spend an evening. Being in a game park really puts wildlife films into context!
As Shingwedzi is a main rest camp, it has lots of facilities that are found only at this type of camp, including:
- Conference rooms
- Eateries
- General store
- Laundry
- Petrol station
- Picnic area for day visitors
- Post box
- Swimming pool
If you like bird watching or want to see some water creatures in action, there are two bird hides in the vicinity of the rest camp.
Kanniedood bird hide is 7km (4 miles) and Ntishivana bird hide is 30km (19 miles) away. Both bird hides are to the east of Shingwedzi.
A lovely driving route to follow is out the back gate of the rest camp and along the tree-lined road which follows the river south. We discovered this route on one Kruger Park safari and definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Shingwedzi.
If you’re staying at Shingwedzi for the first night of your Kruger National Park safari, the closest gate to it is Punda Maria Gate, 81km (50 miles) away. It will however, take two hours at least to get to Shingwedzi from this gate.
Punda Maria Gate is also one of the northern most gates in Kruger National Park, so if you’re approaching Shingwedzi from further south, a better gate to use is Phalaborwa Gate, 137km (85 miles) away. The trip from Phalaborwa Gate to Shingwedzi will take you at least 3 hours.
Let’s finish off with a bit of trivia. Did you know that the rest camp is named after one of the Magnificent Seven elephants? That’s right, Shingwedzi was one of those elephants, famous for the length of his tusks!