First Trip to South Africa - Itinerary Help
 

Hi-

We are planning our first trip to South Africa. I have spent a good deal of time perusing these boards to help me with my planning.
Our draft itinerary looks like this:
Fly Newark non-stop to Cape Town
Four nights (including arrival night) in CT
Two nights in Winelands (probably Franshoek as a base) - rental car or get a driver to take us and retrieve us?
3 nights at game preserve in Krueger
Fly home out of J'berg on a night flight

Does this itinerary seem reasonable? Our time in CT would be spent seeing the various sights, as well as a day trip to Boulder Beach.
Your suggestions and recommended tweaks would be appreciated!

What month would this take place?

Late Feb/early March, most likely

Anyone?? Help is appreciated!

I'm originally from Cape Town, so I would recommend possible the following:

Get a hire car.
3 nights in Cape Town (Where in Cape Town?)- Boulders Beach is an hour's scenic drive from Cape Town.
2 nights in Franshoek/Stellenbosch region OR have you thought about the Knysna garden route instead?
If you like wine-tasting, then yes I would recommend booking. I went to Stellenbosch University, so I'm biased and say they have better vineyards :)

Driving up to Kruger Park? Where are you staying? I'll take Skukuza as an example. Skukuza is the Kruger National Park's largest rest camp, also about 1100 miles from Cape Town. Unless you are flying CPT - JNB and then driving 5 hours to Kruger Park, it would not make sense to drive up from Cape Town. However Airlink operate flights between CPT and SZK if that is of interest to you and your budget.

Hope that is helpful. I'll check back here if you have any questions.

Yes, what's your plan for getting from Cape Town to the Kruger area, and from Kruger back to JNB? Presumably you're flying, but the devil will be in the details. Are you looking at staying within the national park or at one of the numerous lodges on private reserves that abut Kruger NP? Some of the latter offer their own airstrips, or share strips accessed by Airlink. But it's important to know, because otherwise access can be lengthy and a bit complicated, and the one thing you don't want to do if staying at a private lodge is let the logistics eat into your time at the lodge. You don't want to arrive so late as to miss the evening game drive, for example, since you'll be spending a lot for your stay. Hope that makes sense.

Otherwise I think the plan is fine. I'd prefer Stellenbosch over Franschhoek also, but a rental car can make touring the region quite easy. Note it's going to be hot, muggy, and potentially rainy around Kruger, and you should decide whether to use malaria prophylaxis during your stay. Just as a thought experiment, you might want to look at the Madikwe reserve on the Botswana border in place of Kruger, as it's a malaria free area.

We plan to fly to/from Krueger using Airlink.
It sounds as though a rental car would be a good idea for the Winelands portion of the trip.
I am glad you mentioned the malaria medication - we will give that some thought.
Should we get a driver for the Cape Peninsula day trip or a rental car?
Thanks in advance.

I personally would use a rental car. The drive down to Simonstown is easy and goes through a lot of the southern suburbs of Cape Town.

Based on your suggestions, I've revised our itinerary somewhat, but could use further guidance. Our trip now would look like this:

Direct flight to CPT from Newark, arriving 9:30 PM (As we will need a rental car later in the CPT stay, do we pick one up at airport on arrival, assuming they are open that late or get a transfer into the city and pick up car in city a couple days later?)

Days 1 & 2 - explore Cape Town on our own, including Robben Island, Table Mountain, District 6 Museum, botanical gardens, possibly picking up rental car in town on Day 2

Day 3 - Explore the Cape Peninsula on our own, including Simonstown (sp?), but returning to hotel before dark

Day 4 - Check out of CPT hotel and drive to Winelands, staying in either Stellenbosch or Franschhoek

Day 5 - Explore Winelands

Day 6 - Drive very early to CPT airport, drop rental car in time for 10:25 am Airlink flight to Kruger; check into game preserve

Days 7 & 8 - Game Preserve

Day 9 - Fly home from Jo'berg that evening

Thoughts and suggestions? Thank you in advance for your help.

You are wise to plan Table Mountain and Robben Island for the first two days in Cape Town, as both are weather dependent. Try to be a little flexible in case wind, or cloud (in the case of Table Mountain), affects your plans.

You can buy tickets on the official Table Mountain website that are good for 7 days from the proposed date, then choose the best day to go. The website also has useful real time information including weather at the top, visibility, waiting times at the upper and lower stations, and tells if the cableway is running or not. it’s also possible to climb the mountain and take the cableway back down if you like.

https://tablemountain.net/

The Table Mountain cableway is shut down when winds are too strong, and sometimes when the cableway is running visibility is poor to zero when the “tablecloth” covers the mountain. No point in going up if you can’t see the beautiful views from the top. The tablecloth is spectacular from ground level, though, and would make a great photo from the Robben Island ferry.

You itinerary looks pretty good to me. Wise advice from Heimdall early planning for Table Mountain. We were in CT for a week at the end of our SA trip and only just managed to get up the mountain on our penultimate day due to the weather and problems with the cable car. To be frank, whilst the view was great, if we had been there for a short time, I think I would have felt that the time would have been better utilised elsewhere.

We had a rental car for our whole trip but if we didn't I would definitely pick one up at the airport. Rental charges in SA are cheap and we found having the car to be really useful to get around CT and its environs. Some really nice drives out to some amazing beaches. You can do some places by public transport but it clearly takes longer. We used Uber on a couple of occasions but were not impressed with the standards of either the cars or the, driving!

We visited both Stellenbosch and Franschoek and much preferred Stellenbosch and stayed in a wonderful apartment there very close to the main drag. We visited a couple of the vineyards by car but it is probably best done by one of the many tours there.

Cant comment on Kruger as we chose not to go there and instead opted to stay in several of the SANParks - https://www.sanparks.org and do self drive safaris from those.

I have revised our itinerary (late Feb-early March 2024) based on further research and comments on this board. (Fodorites are so very helpful.) Would love comments on the revised itinerary, esp whether I've allotted too much or too little time to an area:

Day 1 - Arrive Cape Town at 6 pm, car service to hotel
4 nights in Cape Town, to explore Table Mountain, Robben Island, District 6 museum, botanical gardens, Bo Kaap, etc

Day 5 - Using previously picked up rental car, drive to Cape Peninsula, staying 2 nights to allow for leisure exploration of what sounds like a beautiful area. Too long?

Day 7 - Drive to Stellenbosch for 2 nights, exploring Winelands region

Day 9 - Early drive to CT airport for flight to Kruger area, followed by 3 nights at a Sabi Sand game preserve.

Flight back to Cape Town airport and night flight back to U.S.
Thank you in advance.

Anyone? Thank you

I did post a response a few days ago but it seems to have disappeared along with a few other of my posts. Not sure what is going on with these forums??

Anyway, IMO your allocation of time looks good apart perhaps for the Cape Peninsula section. You could easily drive the peninsula in a day so not sure I would allocate two nights for that. Perhaps take a drive out from Cape Town via Chapmans Peak Drive and then spend a night or two around Boulders Beach before heading off to Stellenbosch.

Two nights in Stellenboch is fine and enough time for taking a "hop on hop off" wine tour. fIt is a nice laid back sort of place with loads of fantastic places to eat, so an extra day there would be no hardship! We rented a terrific apartment there for a few days https://www.dehaasliving.co.za/die-laan-2/ very close to the centre. A nice change from hotels.

I think the 4 nights you have planned in CT should be enough to see all of those sights. I would, however, keep a close eye on the website for table mountain. We were there for a week and struggled to get up there. Power cuts and the weather conspired against us and we only made it on our penultimate day in the city. If that is a priority I would take the opportunity as soon as you can and work everything else around that. I would plan on Table Mountain on my first day.

We enjoyed Cape Town immensely but we are sem- considering a return there next year and would probably stay in one of the beach suburbs like Camps Bay and travel in to CT for sightseeing.

Hope this helps and happy travels

You say this will be your first trip to South Africa, but will this be your first safari?

Different strokes for different folks, but I'd totally rethink the allocation of your trip in terms of safari vs. non-safari. If I had 12 days in Africa, I certainly wouldn't spend only 3 days on safari and 9 days seeing non-safari stuff in Africa. To me, an African safari is unique and special. The non-safari stuff in South Africa just isn't on that same level.

Do you think you'd be bored with more than 3 days of a safari? I do think long safaris are often overkill for most people, but 3 days is a very very short safari.

Thank you for your comments and suggestions. This will be our first safari and, for us, I think 3 days is the right amount of time. We like trips that offer a combination of experiences - city/country/coast, etc. We know 3 days is short for a safari, but we've discussed it and think it's right for us. We may reduce the Cape Peninsula stay to 1 night and add a night to Cape Town so we can explore more of the area.

I assume your safari planner is arranging the Airlink flights and connections to your international flight?

Now you are going back to Cape Town for the homeward leg rather than J'Berg? I assume that the connections are six of one, half dozen of the other?

The Chapman's Peak drive mentioned is well worth doing. You do need to be careful with where you stop and not leave an unattended vehicle with all of your luggage outside of a guarded area.

That may affect you scheduling of sightseeing and lodging. I did switch hotels several times but had an odd schedule (trying to catch a Cape Town Pelagics excursion out of Simonstown which leaves early morning).

Unfortunately I believe my wonderful Airbnb in Seaforth is no longer available for short term stays, but Seaforth isn't a bad option for penguins and Cape Peninsula touring.

Three nights is fine imho. The reserves tend to have a repetitive schedule - each day starts with a crazy hour morning drive, they may have walks etc during the day and a late afternoon/early evening drive before dinner. If you had more time for a Kruger self-drive 3 days is just scratching the surface.

We stayed in rural boutique hotels in both Stellenbosch and Franschhoek - and as opposed to others here - we preferred Franschhoek - nestled in a bowl of mountains. A beautiful area! When we drove from Franschhoek to Stellenbosch we took the long way around - over the pass (baboon alert!) and down to the coast to see the other penguin colony at Betty's Bay - before driving on to Stellenbosch. It was a great drive.