In order to link up with friends we are juggling our Aug-Sept visit to South Africa so that a lot more driving is in the offing. Our itinerary now looks like JNB - Madikwe - Sabi Sands - Balule - Swaziland - Drakensberg (KZN - Giant's Castle etc.) - Garden Route - CPT; About 3 weeks altogether; not spending much time in CPT, just flying out.

So getting a good deal on a rental/hire car is important - one way rental, okay to take into Swaziland (haven't been, assume SA insurance covers it?) etc.

Does anyone have any recommendations or recent experience with car agencies that they could share? I'm prepared for sticker shock but would like to know. Also, what's the current cost of fuel in SA?

Thanks for all feedback.

For fuel, at this Shell site: http://tinyurl.com/jraqk

Price goes up or down at 0h00 on the first Wednesday of the month. And lately has gone only up. By lots. With more bad news coming up, as you'll see from the forecast at the top of that page.

Fuel is a slightly lower price at the Coast, as compared with Inland.

Because I'm what you might call anal about this kind of thing, I drew up a spreadsheet in which I compared the options of the various rental companies operating in S Africa.

For each one I noted down prices for basic car hire, extra driver, one way drop off fee, empty tank on return, extra insurance to reduce excess to zero, extra tyre, admin fee, extra cost to take it into Swaziland and I also included notes on which type of car, whether mileage was unlimited, whether we were covered if we drove on dirt tracks in game reserves etc.

I looked at:

www.auto-europe.co.uk
www.rentacar-southafrica.com
www.drivesouthafrica.net
www.europcar.co.za
www.rentacar-worldwide.com
www.africarhire.com
www.avis.com
www.alamo.com
www.hertz.com
www.tempestcarhire.com
www.budget.com
www.valuerentalcar.com

Whilst I thought tempest were going to work out cheapest on first glance, it turned out that they weren't when I took into account all the extras and also some, I forget which, did not allow you to reduce excess to zero or cover you for driving on dirt-tracks.

PS Our trip wain 2004, we rented a car for 17 nights between Cape Town to Port Elizabeth and another for 17 nights between Durban and Johannesburg.

Would you be so kind to share your spread sheet with us and let us know which company has the best deal.

Colin, waaaaaaaaaaaaay out of date, this was back in 2004 and prices change ALL the time! I don't have all the information to hand anymore anyway.

Sorry!