About Sausage Tree Safari Camp

Sausage Tree is a five-suite family-owned safari camp in Olifants West Nature Reserve, part of the Greater Kruger. Owned and run since 2012 by the Carne and van der Ploeg families — James & Sonja Carne and Deon & Tamara van der Ploeg, in equal partnership. The camp takes a maximum of ten guests at a time. The team has been in place for years, not seasons.

Who we are

Sausage Tree is owned by four people in equal partnership — the Carne family and the van der Ploeg family. The two families opened the camp together in 2012 and have run it together ever since.

The Carne family

James & Sonja Carne are at camp day to day, hosting every stay.

James Carne has more than twenty years of safari experience in the Olifants West Nature Reserve — meaning he knows this specific bush, not safari-in-general, but this reserve through fourteen consecutive seasons of guests, weather, and wildlife behaviour. James is fluent in French and conversational in Spanish, and is involved in the local Daktari Bush School board as well as in everyday camp life.

Sonja Carne runs the front-of-house, the rhythm of meals, and the small adjustments that make a stay feel personal rather than processed. Sonja speaks fluent Dutch alongside English. Her eye runs the camp’s interior aesthetic — the fusion of African and modern that guests recognise on arrival.

The van der Ploeg family

Deon & Tamara van der Ploeg are co-owners equal with the Carnes — the two families have shaped Sausage Tree together for over a decade.

The guiding team is led by Themba — FGASA-qualified, promoted from tracker after years reading the Olifants West bush. He works alongside Polite (also a qualified guide) and Life (tracker). In the kitchen, Pitso has been Head Chef since the camp opened in 2012 — chef continuity that is rare in the bush. Kabelo joined as Sous Chef in 2023; she attended Daktari Bush School as a child, returned to work there as a cook after school, and then came to us — closing the conservation loop through the kitchen. Front of house: Thandy, Nelisiwe, and Karrine.

That is the team. Five-language coverage across the owners and the team (English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish). Meet the family in more detail.

Where we are

Sausage Tree sits inside the Olifants West Nature Reserve, in the northern part of the Greater Kruger. We have over 3,900 hectares of traversing rights, including four kilometres along the Olifants River, which forms the reserve’s northern boundary. The terrain runs from riverine forest along the Olifants up to the ancient volcanic koppies that dot the reserve, with the Drakensberg escarpment on the western horizon.

Olifants West is part of the open-system Associated Private Nature Reserves (APNR) — fences down between the reserve and Kruger National Park itself, meaning wildlife moves freely. We are around twenty-five minutes from Hoedspruit town and roughly thirty to forty-five minutes from Hoedspruit Eastgate Airport (HDS) by road. More on the reserve here.

What we commit to

Sausage Tree is solar-powered. We employ staff from the surrounding communities, procure supplies locally where possible, and clear alien plants while nurturing the indigenous flora that belongs in this reserve.

Every booking with Sausage Tree contributes R50 to Daktari Bush School and Wildlife Orphanage, the local conservation-education programme and wildlife rehabilitation centre we have supported since the camp opened. Daktari brings rural South African schoolchildren into the bush for week-long environmental-education residencies. The orphanage cares for animals that cannot be released back to the wild. We also support the Black Mambas anti-poaching unit (UNEP Champions of the Earth Award, 2015) and promote guest visits to the Nourish Eco-Village community project in nearby Hoedspruit. The full set of relationships — Daktari, the Black Mambas, Nourish, and our Pack for a Purpose membership — is laid out in Projects we support.

Plan your visit

If you would like to see what staying with us looks like in practical detail, the natural next reads are:

Every booking with Sausage Tree contributes R50 to Daktari Bush School and Wildlife Orphanage.