Driving the Garden Route on the South coast is great, you will see Penguins in Simons Town, Whales in Hermanus. Off the route just a bit is the Cango Wildlife Ranch, we have an adopted Cheetah that lives there and possible to play with.
Stellenboche is the wine country, not far from CapeTown many winerys there.
In Cape town there are serveral travel companies to book game lodges with. European and American prices are higher. They know which game lodge has availability.
Kruger is a nice drive, you don't need to even look for animals, you just stop where all the other cars are, not the way to see the animals.