King's Pool Camp

"All of the camps we visited (Jao, Kalahari Sands, and King's Pool) were fantastic, the service and accommodations more than we expected, and the knowledgeable staff extremely helpful and informative."

We enjoyed our trip to the Delta very much. I seem to always have my "travel agent" hat on when we travel because I'm always comparing and contrasting different camps, countries, etc! lol This was the first time that we have been to a Wilderness Sa fari camp, Kings Pool. It seemed as though most of the guests were only staying at Wilderness properties but we were glad to have stayed at the Sanctuary camps to compare. Kings Pool had the best room and view as well as lots of wildlife in the camp (I have video of a large bull elephant right outside the front door of our room), but the game was sparse in the Linyanti area compared to Sabi and the food only got a 5 from us. We did get the room that I had requested at Baines and Kings Pool but not at Chiefs. All in all, we're glad we went to the the Delta (the water was lower this year than in the last 3 years we were told but still beautiful) but don't feel that Botswana offers good value for the quantity of the game that we saw. That seemed to be a fairly prevalent opinion that we heard from others as well. So, you'll be glad to hear that we continue to sing the praises of South Africa and Sabi Sand and will continue to encourage people to visit!

Kings Pool has special atmoshere with the deck overlooking the hippo's. Quite a difference in quality of the guides, one was the best ever, and one mediocre. If you swap cars it becomes very noticable. Wild life in Kings Pool was great : leopard with prey in the trees, lion family digesting the last parts of baby elephant, chasing hyenas for over 5 kilometers to find their den. They arranged a great afternoon cruise with sundowners on the upperdeck, very comfortable and relaxing.

We were punctually collected by Alex from Kings Pool and welcomed like a part of the family when we got to camp…. Here I really can’t say enough about the staff at Kings Pool in specific “One” who made all my valentines dreams come true… they treated us like absolute royalty, nothing was too much, but there was also enough space just to chill and be ourselves whilst being waited on hand and foot – this is quite a fine balance to get right and they did it magically! Our guide on this part of the trip was a little too much like a school headmaster for me, he was quite strict about not talking on the drive, which didn’t leave much room for chatting to the other guests which got quite boring quite quickly and I actually ducked out of a few drives because I found they were quite long time wise and also not very much ‘fun’. The food, service from all the other staff, location, amenities etc. was spectacular and the wildlife, including the morning serenade of Hippo’s was enough to keep us smiling

It was fantastic. The staff at this camp were just perfect. They had very social managers, excellent location and service was outstanding. The game viewing was also great, the only thing we did not see were wild dogs, that in spite of our driver Mose s tearing from the lodge to the far boundary of the property just to find a pack of them for us. We missed them, but it was simply his attitude to helping make our time memorable that was great. We had baboons raid our room and a very large elephant literally 3 metres from our front door. This place was a great start to our trip.