Dube camping near Gauteng

CARAVAN AND CAMPING SITES

by Nicoin Campsiteson Posted on

Caravan and camping sites in South Africa

Caravan and camping sites can be found across South Africa, offering accommodation for weekend, holiday and long-term campers.

In all provinces, there are camping sites and each province caters for multiple sections of the caravan camping market. These sections vary according to where people are, what they are looking for and what season of the year they want to camp.

All campsites or camping grounds in South Africa cater for weekend and holiday or short-term campers.

But there are an increasing number of camping grounds that are prepared to accommodate long-term campers. They are campers who camp for a month or more at one campsite.

CARAVAN AND CAMPING SITES. Camping with our caravan at Rust Oord near Brits

Gauteng camping

Camping in Gauteng is focused on weekend camping and to a lesser extent, school holiday camping.

Short-period camping is the result of distance and time. The distance people have to travel to reach their camping destination and the time they have available prescribe where they can camp. The time and distance factors largely dictate Gauteng’s camping behaviour.

Although Gauteng may not be the preferred long-term camping destination in South Africa, it is still probably one of the busiest caravan and camping provinces because of the size of its population.

Thousands of people leave the metropolis of Gauteng every weekend and school holiday to camp while millions more attend other leisure activities and sports events.

The main areas where Gauteng campers go are within two hours drive from the main centres. This means that only a relatively small section of the caravanning and camping happens inside the province. If you Google for camping or caravan sites in Gauteng you will notice that most of the results are camping resorts outside the province.

Gauteng is the smallest of the nine provinces and the main camping destinations are clustered around Johannesburg. The border of Gauteng roughly runs outside the towns and areas of Vereeniging, Vanderbijlpark, Carletonville, Magaliesburg, Hekpoort, Rhenosterspruit, Hammanskraal, Rust de Winter, Bronkhorstspruit, Verena, Nigel and Heidelberg. It extends some distance outside the towns in the South of the province.

The more popular caravan and campsites fall outside these borders.

Dinokeng is an extensive area to the North-East of Tshwane with tented accommodation, camping and caravanning grounds.

They include:

Contact each camp to find out if they accommodate long-term campers or give special rates for retired people and all-season campers.

Hotdogs are a good idea for camping children to grab and eat.

GAUTENG QUICKY HOTDOG

In Gauteng, they eat on the run from the caravan to the swimming pool.

You need a hot dog roll, sausage, relish and your sauce of choice.

North-West camping

North-West hosts some of the popular caravan and camping destinations around Gauteng.

These resorts are clustered around Hartbeespoort, Brits and the area fanning out to the North-West of South Africa. It includes Pilanesberg and Madikwe Game Reserves.

The remainder of North-West houses smaller tourism areas and scattered camping resorts.

Camping grounds around Brits are popular with Gauteng campers. Most of them accept all-season campers and offer special rates for pensioners and long-term campers. A few only accept weekend campers but many offer special midweek rates and accommodate long-term campers.

Some of the North West camping grounds near Johannesburg and Pretoria:

More to the North-West of Brits are:

Paptert with cheese made easily in a caravan or camp oven

NORTH WEST PAPTERT

North-West is mealie world. Maize meal and your imagination topped with cheese. Nice with sweet hot coffee.

Limpopo camping

Limpopo is a large province bordering two countries namely Botswana and Zimbabwe (West and North) and nearly the whole length of Kruger Park in the East.

Popular caravan and camping areas are mostly found around Bela-Bela, along Kruger Park (part of Mpumalanga) and scattered over the province.

Limpopo is a tourist destination that serves many interests. Campers from Gauteng do weekend camps around most of the towns as far as Polokwane. The most popular area is around Bela-Bela because it is only about an hour’s drive from Johannesburg. Hoedspruit on the Kruger Park border mostly offers tented camps.

Some of the campsites in Limpopo:

Kudu steaks with mushroom sauce is easy to prepare while camping

LIMPOPO THE GAME PROVINCE

Limpopo is where the game farms are and where the hunters go in WInter.

Mpumalanga camping

The main camping and caravanning area in Mpumalanga is Kruger Park.

It is a vast province that is bordered by Kwazulu-Natal, Freestate, Gauteng, Limpopo, Mocambique and Eswatini (Swaziland). The size of the province means there are a number of camping resorts scattered province-wide.

Mpumalanga caravan and camping resorts:

Whisk a smoothie to keep the family healthy while camping

MPUMALANGA IS KRUGER PARK AND FRUIT

Enjoy a berry smoothie cold on a summer’s day and fresh as a winter’s breakfast while camping.

KZN camping

Kwazulu-Natal is a favourite camping province thanks to its long coastline and warm water as well as the distance from Gauteng.

Camping in any KZN resort means a sea vacation and it offers a variety of tourist attractions. Although most caravan parks are next to the sea, KZN also has camping resorts in the Drakensberg, the Natal Midlands and the provincial game parks.

There are too many parks to list in this article. Here is a map. The list below is a few main caravan parks on the coast that are popular with long-term campers.

Camping and Caravanning in KZN:

Chicken curry is easy to make in a caravan kitchen when camping

KZN FISH AND CURRY

KZN is a province known for curry and fish. Some of the nicest curry dishes are found here and you can fish and hunt for mussels on the beach

Western Cape camping

The Western Cape is a favourite tourism destination for people from the interior.

The distance from other provinces with large numbers of campers however means that campers and caravanners visit the province mainly during December.

It is a favourite destination for long-term campers, especially those who tour, as well as pensioners. The Western Cape has the Indian Ocean in the East, the Southern Ocean where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet on the South Coast of the province, and the Atlantic Ocean in the West.

Camping and caravan parks are mainly focused on the coastline with individual parks along the main roads aimed at serving caravan and tent campers on their way to the Western Cape.

Western Cape camping rates seem to be higher than what one finds in the Northern provinces and even KZN. They also tend not to have pensioners or long-term rates.

Western Cape Camping Resorts:

Mussels from the sea is an easy dish for caravanners when camping

WESTERN CAPE MUSSELS

The Western Cape is seafood country where wise cooks pick mussels from the rocks, green leaf veggies from the dunes and fish from the sea.

Freestate camping

The Freestate is a landlocked province with two rivers that draw campers. The Vaal and Gariep rivers are the veins along which caravan and camping sites are scattered. Both rivers are shared with other provinces.

Freestate Camping Resorts

Lamb chops for braai while caravanning or camping. Guy with a Braai

FREESTATE WHERE THE SHEEP LIVE

The Freestate is filled with sheep farmers (and maize and other things). Fish in the rivers and enjoy the wide-open spaces underlined by waving grass.

Eastern Cape Camping

The Eastern Cape has some of South Africa’s most pristine forests and beaches.

The province boasts quite a large number of camping sites. Many caravan campers are scared off by the safety risks and the lacking infrastructure in the East of the province.

Despite this, many campers visit the province every year. It is a favourite among off-road campers, anglers and long-term campers.

Eastern Cape Camping Resorts

Samp and beans recipe for caravanners and campers in South Africa

EASTERN CAPE

The province of traditions of samp and sea.
Samp is dried white corn (mealie) kernels that have been crunched. Often cooked with dried beans. It offers some of the most beautiful beaches and sea views in the country.

Northern Cape camping

The Northern Cape is the most expansive and sparsely populated province in South Africa.

This means that it has fewer caravan and camping sites although it boasts specific areas that are tourist dreams. The Gariep River and the Augrabies Waterfall are the two main attractions.

Many caravan parks are situated along the main roads to serve tourists on their way through, with most in the Northern Namaqua flower areas. The main flower areas fall in the Western Cape below Garies.

Bacon and cider roosterkoek to make while camping and caravanning in South Africa.

NORTHERN CAPE

The province of diamonds, meat and roosterkoek. Roosterkoek is a bread-dough cake baked on a grid over an open fire.

Caravan and camping sites near me

Searching for caravan camps or camping sites “near me” online will inevitably bring up a range of results.

A caravan or camping destination may rank well on search engines but it may not be what it is said to be once you visit it.

Social media platform discussions and groups, together with reviews, do give one a sense of what to expect. The information and advice campers give are often either old information, hearsay or coming from someone with widely different views of what is considered one, three or five-star camping sites.

In my observation of online advice, I came to the conclusion that risk often goes hand-in-hand with the informer providing information, or rather advice, without providing reasons for their views. People who give camping information or advice and provide the basis on which they hold a certain view often provides the most reliable caravan and camping sites information.

How to know which information about camping and caravan sites is (probably) trustworthy:

Who to trust?
thought the camper.
When all of them give their advice?
When all I want is quickly know
the better camping place to go.
Not for them nor for their friends, 
not what they heard or what they think.

So I will, this was his thought,
listen to those who tell me not
what to do or where to go.
Just WHY they think it'll make me grow.

Camping accommodation with private ablutions in South Africa

Prospective campers often enquire about camping sites with private ablutions.

Campers prefer private ablutions for a variety of reasons. This preference is often because of health reasons with some campers with a personal preference not to share ablution facilities with others.

Although there are camping sites and caravan parks with private ablutions everywhere, it is difficult to list them in an article like this because it can change in a day.

There are three types of private camping facilities:

  • Ablutions
  • Kitchens
  • Kitchen and ablution facilities.

Free camping in South Africa

Free camping is not something you will find easily in South Africa.

One may find a good Samaritan farmer or property owner who will allow you to camp free overnight but we have no official free camping sites.

Lists of campgrounds and campsite rates

If you follow the Facebook Groups dedicated to camping you will notice that some questions are asked repeatedly. One of these questions is where one can find campgrounds and what their rates are.

Lists of campgrounds and their rates are difficult to provide because it is time-consuming to compile. At the same time, the camping destinations update their rates at least every year and sometimes in between as they become popular.

There is little benefit to anyone to compile and maintain these lists. For the same reason, you will see that even the large tourism, camping and caravanning websites and magazines only have a number of camping sites in each area. Most of the time they do not provide the venue’s rates because that become outdated with every change of rates. Obviously, people want to pay the rates they see published. When you want to see an unhappy camper wait till he hears that the published rates are incorrect and that he must actually pay more.

Why I wrote this long explanation is because I have much appreciation for people who do publish these lists, more so because I know how much work they put in. Most of them use this as a lure to promote something else. It can be a product, a service or a business. The list is used to put the name of the business in your mind.

What their motivation is, does not matter to me because I benefit from their free work regardless of whether I buy their products or visit their shop.

That is why I would like to give a shout-out to Pepper Pistol for providing their map of campsites under the Facebook name of Outdoor Legends. They created and maintain this map.

If you zoom in on the map (CTRL + Scroll on a laptop or swipe your fingers wider on a cellphone screen) you can drill down to individual campsites. Click on the campsite icon and then on “More info” or “Directions”. There it is. They saved me all the trouble!

SA Campsites have campsites listed on their website.

It is better to call or email campgrounds to enquire about their rates. In this way, you can make sure you don’t receive a costly surprise when you arrive.

We hope this gives you a start when searching for caravan and camping sites in South Africa.

Long-term campsites

Update 29/2/2024:

We have been camping full time for more than a year and these campsites are campsites we visited that allow long-term campers:

  1. Rocky Bay, Scottburgh, KZN
  2. Yellow Sands, Gonubie, Eastern Cape
  3. Medolino, Port Alfred, Eastern Cape
  4. Big Fish Caravan Park, Jeffreys Bay, Eastern Cape
  5. Harkerville Forest Lodge, Plettenberg Bay, Western Cape
  6. Lake Pleasant, Sedgefield, Western Cape
  7. Buffelskop, Knysna, Western Cape
  8. Buffelsbaai, Knysna, Western Cape
  9. Dibiki, Hartenbos, Western Cape
  10. Dibiki, Riversdal, Western Cape
  11. Jongensfontein, Stilbaai, Western Cape
  12. Montagu Caravan Park, Montagu, Western Cape
  13. Midwest Caravan Park, Saldanha Bay, Western Cape
  14. Kalahari Water, Keimoes, Northern Cape
  15. T’kabies, Keimoes, Northern Cape
  16. Dube Game Lodge, Brits, North-West
  17. Dinokeng Resort, Dinokeng, Gauteng