RFI - Africa 2020

[psalms144.1]

All - my brother (the rich one) just sprung my Christmas/Retirement gift on me. He wants to take me, my family, and his family on a 2-3 week excursion to Africa in 2020. I've dreamed of a safari for decades now, obviously this will be a sight-seeing safari, not a shooting one (not an issue for me - the critters will be there if/when I go back with a big gun or three!). So, here's what I've been tasked with so far:

My brother wants to see Victoria Falls, and the table mountain in Capetown. His daughters want to see the silverbacks. I'm looking for the Big 5, and am mostly interested in plains game.

So, let's hear how we do this. Recommended guides/outfitters/locations. He's been looking at National Geographic? I've been starting to dig into smaller private outfits, but not sure about the issue of getting from one side of SA to the other, not to mention getting up to Botswana(?) for the silverbacks.

Any/all input and advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[BigT]

CapeTown is a must see. Getting around SA is pretty easy jhb to cape town is a 2 odd hour flight. Best big 5 stuff is going to be north of jhb.


Gorillas are much further north. Rwanda is apparently the spot for that

[luckyman]

Ha, 18 months ago 7 of us went for 2.5 weeks to South Africa, and a little bit of Zimbabwe, Botaswana, and a tiny slice of Zambia. I’ll have a bunch of stuff once I get back to my computer late this week. That’s a great trip; you’ll have a awesome time!

[ranger]

This is on my bucket list - great post

[blues]

This is on my bucket list - great post

Ours too. Hmmm...

[luckyman]

OK, here's the itinerary I did. There was a group of 7 of us that did it. We got a great travel agent to help with things. With that big a party in several places we had arranged a driver/guide with a van that could fit all of us, as a means of transportation between the various stops. It was a good group, I think all the drivers had fun with us.

Day 1 - CAPE TOWN
We did a enjoy a half a day city tour right when we got there, to keep us awake until the evening.

Day 2. Cape Town unstructured
Cape Town is an awesome city, a bit in the mold of San Francisco and Sydney, but even better in many ways

Day 3 - Cape Town Peninsula tour
This included Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve and Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

Day 4 - Garden Route to to Oudsthoorn
We had the best guide/driver for this whole section. Let me know if you want his name. This included a stop at the Highgate Ostrich Farm
We stayed overnight at the Buffelsdrift Game Reserve in upscale permanent tents. This was really nice and a great intro to seeing game and "roughing it" for the less adventuresome in my party, but I could see skipping it if you are a crew more experienced in adventures. It's a much more managed environment than the other places we went later.

Day 5 - OUDSTHOORN - SEDGEFIELD -KNYSNA
Started with a game drive at Buffelsdrift. On the drive stopped at the Kango Caves. Went through the majestic Outeniqua Mountains. Ended up at the superb Doveronsea Guest house in Sedgefield.

Day 6 - SEDGEFIELD -KNYSNA
This was more of an easy day; Knysna was only like 10 miles from Sedgefield. We did the Featherbed Bay John Benn cruise, then came back to Doveronsea.
Note if memory serves me correctly there has since been a horrible fire in this area, and I'm not sure what was impacted.

Day 7 - PLETTENBERG BAY – PORT ELIZABETH -DURBAN
The highlight of this day was the Cheetah walk in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center close to Plettenberg Bay. Literally walking side-by-side with Cheetahs through the bush! They were definitely leading us on the walk, you don't try to tell a cheetah where to go, and you never ever get in front of the cheetah. In the early afternoon we went to the airport to fly into Durban, and from there drove 2.5 hours to the Rhino River Lodge. We also got to go into a Jaguar enclosure, where the jaguars were out roaming around in this reasonably sized area and we were the ones in the enclosure. I ended up about 2 feet away from a jaguar. This turned out to be especially awesome as this was our only Jaguar sighting of the trip.

Day 8- Rhino River Lodge
Early morning game drive, then went to the Dumazulu Cultural Village. This was super-touristy, but hilarious as we among other things got to learn how to pronounce Zulu words with the "clicks" in them, and the hosts were bantering with us, pretending to try to set up the single kinda nerdy guy in our party with a Zulu girl.
I think we did an afternoon game drive also, but my notes are fuzzy on this. Rhino River Lodge was really nice. They had a pet warthog there that was a total ugly cuddly ham, ... er attention-hound. Game drives were good, but not as good at the 3rd place we went (see below), and still in a fairly strongly "managed" area. Got to see lots of game including a white rhino.

Day 9 - Durban
Early morning game drive, then left Rhino River Lodge for Durban
Explored Durban, including a stop at the Indian Market. I got to say, Durban wasn't really my cup of tea, I don't understand the attraction of it. For me this was the most boring afternoon of the trip. We then stayed overnight at a Durban B&B.

Day 10- Durban to Johannesburg / Karongwe Private Game Reserve
Flew into Joburg, then a great long drive through Blyde River Canyon to Karongwe Private Game Reserve

Days 11 and 12 -Karongwe Private Game Reserve
This was the best part of the trip. Lodging and food was pretty upscale. Due to a problem with our lodging reservation, they ended up giving us the head guide for all our game drives. We saw pretty much everything except Jaguars. Got to see an ultra-cool pretty upclose stalking of a warthog by a big male lion. Have a pretty good picture of a big elephant aggressively walking towards our land rover from my spot in front of the Rover. We had driven around a blind curve and suddenly came up to him. He was in a bad mood as he had just lost his chance to get laid to another bull elephant that stole his potential girlfriend. We later saw him pull up an entire tree, just because he was ticked off and horny apparently. We saw pretty much everything you could imagine except no jaguars. It turns out there was some excitement during the night as a jaguar was prowling through the cabin area, and getting back from dinner to the cabins was a bit of an adventure. We didn't actually personally see the Jaguar and considered that a good thing at the time. I think we did a total of 6 game drives there? We (my wife mainly) were a little worried that we would get burnt out from so many game drives. I've got to say even though I'm not typically a morning person, I think you could wake me up at 4 am every day of my life to go an a game drive like these, and I would never tire of it and probably be the happiest person you could find.

Day 13- 14 Karongwe to Johannesburg
Final morning game drive, then flew back to explore Johannesburg for a day and a half.
Johannesburg and the surrounding area was pretty interesting. My wife and I aren't big museum people (unless the museums have jewels, aircraft, ships, swords, or guns), but theNelson
Mandela Museum, the Hector Pietersen House and particularly the Apartheid Museum and the Jail that housed both Nelson Mandela and Ghandi was completely fascinating. I'd prioritize going to these last two very highly, they would be a shame to miss.

Day 15 - 17 flight to Victoria Falls
We obviously saw Victoria Falls and the Victoria Rain Forests, was to me was great but not overwhelming awesome the way some people in my group thought it was. I still like the "Maid of the Mists" in Niagara Falls
We also did a sunset cruise on the Zambize, crossed over into Zambia and explored Livingston, and went to Chobe National Park in Botswana for a game cruise on a boat. We stayed at the Victoria Falls Safari Club and got to do the "Vulture Culture experience" which was pretty cool also.

We then headed back home via Johannesburg. That was a long-ass set of flights; 30 hours IIRC.

I've been a lot of places, but that was the trip of a lifetime. I went at such an interesting time also; I don't think it will ever quite be the same.

I could add a bunch more details, but this is long already. Feel free to post or message me with questions.

[luckyman]

Note upon re-reading, days 2 through 4 and day 6 were more fun than they sound like, and pretty much every day except for maybe day 9 was an absolute blast. I'm glad we didn't try to include Kenya in the same trip; it would have been just too much.

[luckyman]

Due to the question coming up in a private message, here is the type of vehicle used for the game drives


Being a party of 7 we perfectly fit in one so had one to ourselves.

[BigT]

@luckyman leopard not jaguar.


If you like museums with guns and planes you missed out. The Military History Museum in joburg is amazing. Has what I understand to be the last Me262 night fighter around. Plus all manner of other amazing things.

[luckyman]

@luckyman leopard not jaguar.


If you like museums with guns and planes you missed out. The Military History Museum in joburg is amazing. Has what I understand to be the last Me262 night fighter around. Plus all manner of other amazing things.

Duh I *knew* that. Thanks for the clarification.

Yeah the Military History Museum would have been awesome, but that was a compromise with the rest of the group. A great pointer for anyone considering a visit though.

Hey, what other suggestions do you have? We’d all love to hear...