Digital01

Great TR! Not sure how I missed it until this week! SAA certainly looked better than expected!

Should have gone swimming with the great whites!

milesunited

Thanks for sharing!

worldtraveller73

Thank you Levictus - I went for a more detailed style of report, since its hard to find travel providers in Africa outside of the major hotel chains that you can feel confident booking with that won't disappear or under deliver what was promised. For example, I would have never known about the Travel Agency in Nairobi that handled my land transfers without any issues. I'm happy to share the results with the population here, especially if it was a good experience.

Thanks Digital01.

We had tentatively planned to do a great white cage dive prompted by MrsWT73. However, we ended up getting caught with some bad weather (winds) which was not suitable for the experience. We also discovered after researching beyond the marketing that the launch dock was some two hours drive from Cape Town so we decided to give it a miss on this trip.

For those that are interested in doing this, there are launch docks closer to the wine regions (closer than Cape Town) if you are planning on self driving.

Thanks milesunited.

I'm humbled to have been able to share this report with over 33,000 Flyer Talkers. Africa is such a great aspirational travel destination that's always of great interest. ^

brg

Wonderful story
We have never been to Southern Africa and have to go one day

UTex09

great tr, thanks for sharing it!

worldtraveller73

Thanks brg.

It's totally worth the trip in my opinion. The lower on the ground costs (safari's excluded) make up for the more expensive airfare.

Thanks for your support UTex09.

CMK10

A truly phenomenal report. There are not enough superlatives I can lavish on this. It was brilliant from start to finish, the photography, the thorough descriptions you put into everything. Thank you so much for sharing it, this is truly one of the best reports I've ever read ^

worldtraveller73

Thanks CMK10

That's quite a compliment considering the company that we're in together here on the trip report forum.

Kind regards.

31dany

Great TR, well done! I just finished reading it and I can say it's very informative and with some great insights there. South Africa is a wonderful country, well the whole Southern tip of Africa is amazing. Thanks for sharing!

farbster

[QUOTE=worldtraveller73;21950087]Le Quartier Français.
Comfortable Twin Auberge Room
A Relais and Chateaux Property
Franschhoek, South Africa.

The bathroom offered a heated floor and heated towel rack.





Whoever designed this is an idiot. Who would want the toilet in the middle of the bathroom? Lose one of the sinks and maybe get rid of the tub and put the toilet in its own room.

offerendum

Not so unusual

farbster

Of course it's not unusual, just seems out of place for a nice hotel.

worldtraveller73

Thank you 31dany. MrsWT73 and I are looking forward to our next opportunity to return to South Africa. Indeed as you have described, it's a lovely place and if you can be courageous enough to get off the beaten path and do some self directed travel, it is a wonderful experience.

An interesting observation farbster and offerendum - I have no direct information on the age of the property but it did seem to be a refurbished older property. It seems that in some areas they had cut corners with the refurbishment since, for example, the door handle was falling off of my door- out of place for a high end property anywhere in the world. I am guessing the bathroom fell victim to an older design. Either that or it was a plot for MrsWT73 to keep the bathroom all to herself...

bhrubin

Fantastic trip report! We are returning to South Africa for our 4th visit this January, but without safari on this trip, following our first visits to Rwanda (for gorilla trekking) and Madagascar (to see the lemurs) in December.

I think your less productive safari game viewing in Kruger may be related to the time of year you visited--or just bad luck, possibly. We've done 3 safaris at Singita Boulders in the Sabi Sands private reserve adjacent to Kruger--all of them in April and May. On all of them, we saw tons of lions, entire prides, cubs, as well as many leopards, leopards eating previous kills, some elephants (not nearly as many as in Botswana), many rhino, including a black rhino, hippos galore, giraffe, more antelope varieties than we could count, but only once did we ever see a huge herd of water buffalo, and only once a cheetah (rare in SA). Once we even saw a lion pride kill 2 warthogs that happened to stumble upwind of the pride we'd been watching for a while.

On our second Singita visit in 2007, the rains had fallen more heavily earlier in summer, so the grasses were taller and we were told to expect to see less--but we ended up seeing more than we did on the first and third visits! So sometimes, despite better or poorer conditions and their predicted game viewing, you never know.

South Africa and Kruger are known for seeing immense variety of game--you'll most likely see all of the Big 5 and much more--but not usually the larger herds or accumulations of any one type of game as you might find in Kenya/Tanzania. That has been our experience in Sabi Sands at the April/May period, at least. The lodges in SA tend to be more luxe for the dollar, with a few exceptions, too, than elsewhere, at least from what we've heard from our many fellow safari friends that we met at Singita and in Botswana who'd also been many times to Kenya and Tanzania (and a few to Zambia and Zimbabwe).

Kruger is more crowded than the adjacent private concessions, but a public concession is also usually cheaper. The best benefit of a private concession, other than the obvious privacy and lack of any other tourists/vehicles, is that you can go off-trail to follow the game. You can't go off-trail in a public park. That allowed us to follow the lion pride when they made their kill of the 2 warthogs (we thought the suspension of our Land Rover was going to be torn out from beneath us with all the shrubs and small trees we drove over to follow them!) which is the single most memorable event we've experienced on 4 different safaris. Wherever you may prefer to go, we highly recommend a private concession if you can afford it for precisely that reason.

worldtraveller73

Thanks bruhin. I hope you're enjoying your South African trip as we speak.

You've raised some good points.

I'd agree that the South African lodges are more luxe and less rustic than Kenya - at least based on what we experienced. The Fairmont Mara Safari Club was advertised as a 5 star, but in reality it was more like a 5 star in Kenya.

We did not have the issues about off trail game driving in Kenya. Our guide stuck mostly to roads to access the viewing areas, but once near the Mara, it was pretty much a free for all while aiming for the animals.