Hi all, thanks for all of the help so far in making my decisions for the upcoming trip to S.A and Mozambique.

We will be a party of 4 women in Cape Town, staying at either Mandela Rhodes Place or David's (if they ever get back to us) Guest House.

DF and I are flying from LA and the girls are meeting us from Mozambique, where they are in the Peace Corps. They are broke, so we are trying to do things as cost effectively as possible.

I understand that there is a hop on/off bus for Cape Town itself, but are there any ways of touring Wineland and the Cape area without booking a tour or engaging a guide?
I guess we could rent a car for a day or two if necessary. Is that easy to do from Capetown or should we arrange it from here online?
Thanks again,

Lynnie

p.s I meant to add we will have 5 days to explore this area.

Hylton Ross does a bus for the Cape and winelands. See http://hyltonross.com/

He also does private tours, but I'm told that the bus works out nicely.

Best and safest after a tour is to hire a car, easily done in CPT itself. In fact if you look around the yellow pages you will find inexpensive cars for hire. If you wanted to be really frugal you could rent a wreck... very cheap and nasty little cars, but they get you from A to B

would have had a clue....

Lynnie, there are two hop-on hop-off busses, the "red" and the "blue" routes. See www.citysightseeing.co.za.

Thank you.

We took a half day tour to Cape of Good Hope, to see the penguins and a tour of the Coast. The price was around $1560 Rand - and that took care of 4 of us.... There are tons of tours there - and I would recommend you take some. I was there 2 weeks ago (GORGEOUS place), and while we didn't have any problems, there are riots going on over the illegal immigrants in South Africa. It was really bad in Johannesburg (I won't even share those stories - too horrid), but there were problems in the CT area, as well (Unions versus illegals - not a good mix) - so just be careful. DEFINITELY plan on spending time at the Harbor - FABULOUS restaurants.... and really pretty... And whatever you do - stay away from the baboons (they live in the hills, you'll see them on the side of the road and wandering around places like Cape of Good Hope - had one run up behind me and steal my sandwich - they are TRULY frightening animals..... Have a great time....

Yikes, I hope everything settles down by September. We are staying only 1 night in Jburg and had planned to stay at a B&B near the airport (Dove's Nest). We will be touring Soweto the next day with vhupo and leaving that night. Is the airport area safe?