About this guide
Who's behind Visit iSimangaliso?
An independent visitor guide, published by Visit Africa Publishers. We are not a tour operator, we take no bookings, and we are not connected to the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority or to Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife.
Who writes this
Visit iSimangaliso comes from a small independent publisher whose writer spent years crossing Africa by road, sleeping in a tent on the roof of his own vehicle. The parks were what he kept going back to, and the information about them was the thing that kept letting him down: prices long since replaced, camps long since closed.
This guide is the answer to that. It is built on the official documents themselves, dated line by line, and it says so openly where a document is silent.
What this site is
An independent guide to iSimangaliso Wetland Park, the 220 km coastal park from Maphelane to Kosi Bay that became South Africa's first World Heritage Site in 1999. We are not a tour operator, we do not take bookings, and nobody pays to be listed or to be ranked. No lodge, camp or operator has seen or approved what we write about it.
How we work at iSimangaliso
iSimangaliso is a park in transition, and that shapes every page. The last gate tariff the Authority published ran from 1 December 2024 to 30 November 2025. We publish it as the last confirmed tariff and say plainly that it has expired, rather than repeating the higher figures that circulate without a document behind them.
The state camps changed hands on 1 March 2026, when Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife left and the Authority took over, with private leases to follow. The newest camp tariff we can read is Ezemvelo's 2023/24, so every camp price on this site carries that date and a note that it is a floor.
Some claims about the park are repeated so often that they feel like facts: Africa's largest hippo population, an estuary mouth that has been open since 2021, a R2,000 diving permit. Where the evidence says otherwise, we give what it does say.
Found something outdated? Tell us and we will fix it.
The publisher
Visit iSimangaliso is published by Visit Africa Publishers, which runs a small set of independent guides to Africa's national parks. In KwaZulu-Natal that includes Hluhluwe-iMfolozi, an hour's drive inland. The method is the same on each: official fees with a date on them, every place to stay listed, and a plain note where the record runs out.