Did our trip without an agent and it was great. We landed in J'burg and drove to Kruger for four days, flew into Port Elizabeth and then stayed in Addo for a couple of nights and then drove down the garden route and stayed at thunder river and then down to Bontebok and ended at boulders beach/Cape Town. Trip was amazing. Saw everything--miles and miles of cape buffalo, totally surrounded at one point and just turned the car off and sat, a dozen rhino's with babies, leopard, lions, cheetahs, porcupine, dwarf mongoose, wild dogs, caracal, herds of elephants, secretary birds, kudu, hippos, spotted eagle owl, baboons, wildebeest, everything, and mostly, it was just my wife and I. I would say this--do not drive fast. So much can be seen in the rear view mirror or after other cars pass, let them. Drive slow and when you get to rest stops, look at the boards and see what's been spotted in the area. They won't include rhino's but take a walking or driving tour and you're bound to see several. These are in the parks of course, but you can see a lot along the road too. We saw Nyala by a regular road.
At Kruger, went to bed while lions and cape buffalo went at it for hours. In the morning there was a fresh buffalo kill. Also, bush babies and fruit bats are really loud at night, which some of the camps have. Others have honey badgers and warthogs.
SANPARKS.org
forums. check out KNP Activities & Sightings thread, such as Lake Panic.
Next time, we'll do the falls and Kgalagadi park-but we spread out our time knowing we'd go back.
These are all parks you could die in, make no mistake. Elephants toss cars as do the cape buffalo. They're parks where the animals roam free and you don't carry, which is fine. I remember being on top of a hill overlooking a lake with signs that said you could exit at your own risk with an overlook. I walked over and looked down at kudu carcasses littering the shore of the lake. It was a killing zone when animals went down to drink.