Please critique itinerary
 

Hello,

I am planning a honeymoon trip to Africa for this December. We wanted to experience city/safari/beach, but worry that our current itinerary would be too hurried and too much travel. Does anyone have any suggestions? We are thinking of skipping the vic falls portion and adding more time in Botswana camps.

- SA
Cape Winelands – 2 nights
Cape Town – 3 nights

- Botswana
Chiefs Camp, Okavango Delta – 4 nights

-Zambia
Livingstone (Vic Falls) – 2 nights
travel through Johannesburg – 1 night

-Mozambique
Benguerra Lodge, Mozambique – 4 nights


Thanks for your help. This board has provided very helpful comments!

I think you are right, it is a bit rushed and you will definitely want more time on safari in Botswana! Vic Falls is great to see but in my mind I'd much rather have more time on safari and it will give you more quality time with less wasted transfer time.

If that is your limit for nights I would drop the 2 at Vic Falls and stay 3 nights at Chiefs (or other Delta area camp - Chitabe would be a good one) and then have 3 nights at a camp in the Linyanti/Selinda/Kwando concessions (Lebala, Lagoon, Selinda, Zibalianja, Savuti and Duma Tau are all good choices in that area). Your Cape time and beach time look good for the length of trip you have. That should be a fabulous trip!!

Have you looked at travel time between destinations? Not that I know, but would be minimum 1 day likely 2 days. FWIW.
regards - tom

Thanks for your advice. The tour company has included all flights and travel in our itinerary, so I am not sure how long these trips between spots will take. However, I believe that is why we are spending one night in Johannesburg.

I will have to further explore the Botswana camps. Many people on this board seem to rave about their experiences at some of the camps.

Sonomagirl: you are right again -- you will need to overnight in Joburg so you can have a game drive in Botswana in the morning, fly to Joburg in the p.m. and then out to Mozambique the following a.m. All your flights will be reasonable length and should be straight forward. Not sure if the flight to Vilanculous (for Benguerra) goes everyday or just a couple times a week but I'm sure your agent will time your days to schedule that correctly. Also, I believe there are some days when you can fly Cape Town direct to Maun and others they will route you through Joburg. Either way you should be able to make it to your first Botswana camp for the p.m. safari drive but you may have to be on a pretty early flight out of Cape Town. All in all the flow is very doable.

Having been to Benguerra Island as part of my honeymoon, have you looked into the Marlin Lodge ? Both places are what I call rustic luxury with Marlin a notch above Benguerra Lodge. Marlin Lodge really caters to the honeymoon crowd. We did visit Benguerra Lodge and overall thought Marlin Lodge was nicer-our opinion.

For flight, you take Pelican Air to Vilanculos from JNB. They fly a 50 seat jet-prop which is pretty nice. 2 hour flight and seems like they do 2 flights a day each way, but you will still have to overnight in JNB.

From a safari/wildlife viewing standpoint, I like Predator's suggestions.

I don't know how important Victoria Falls is for you, though. If that is a key destination for your honeymoon, then I'd just keep everything as is. Granted, I know nothing of Mozambique.

Where are you stay in Livingston?

You should have a lovely trip.

PredatorBiologist, thanks for the info, it is very helpful!

Txtrav1, I will ask our tour operator about Marlin lodge. I have tried to read all of the Mozambique reviews on this forum, but it seems like there is no strong opinion either way on resort options here. Can you tell me what types of things were a notch above at Marlin? (accommodation, service, food?)

atravelynn, thanks for your input as well. We actually did not request for Vic Falls to be part of our trip, but our agent put it in our itinerary. We are scheduled to stay at Royal Livingstone if we decide to go and have an elephant ride and helicopter tour planned. Although Vic Falls would be beautiful, it seems like it is more travel in an already travel-packed itinerary.

I appreciate all of your help! I hope I can be just as helpful after my trip as well.

Hello,

First of all congratulations!!!

I agree with the other posts...if that is the entire length of the trip, if i were you i would skip Livingstone. Reason being, December would just be the start of the rainy season....so after a long dry winter the falls will not be that spectacular (especially on the Zambian side).

A combination of Chief's camp with a camp in the Linyanti eco-system would be ideal. Your choices would be from amongst the following camps: Lagoon/Lebala, Selinda/Zibalianja, Duma Tau/Savuti

Good luck on the planning. I dont know anything about Mozambique, but Cape Town looks good....

Hari

Sonomagirl,
I thought you might have really wanted to include a waterfall on your honeymoon since that is kind of a tradition. If that's not the case, then definitely more time in game-rich Botswana, but it will probably be more expensive.

Sonomagirl,

Sorry for the delay, but have been busy last few weeks and not really kept up with reading the posts.

Marlin Lodge from overall research on the net gets a higher rating than Benguerra Lodge. Marlin Lodge has more room category options. They were building new rooms when we were there. I can just say I liked the beach & location better at Marlin. They have A/C in the rooms - not sure Benguerra does. It does get hot & humid, so A/C is nice. Marlin Lodge definetly caters to honeymooners. Everybody was on their honeymoon or at least with a significant other except 1 family from UK. They looked really out of place. As I said, it's just a laid back, rustic luxury beach resort. Nothing fancy, but you are paying to get away from it all and have good service. Staff and service were fine, food was good with emphasis on seafood. Never had Barracuda until 1st day there and it was some of the best fish I have ever had. Hope I'm not too late in my reply to help you out.

I am late to the party, but the itinerary looks really nice to me...couldn't have crafted it better myself.

Rocco, you were late because you kept modeling those new jeans of yours in the mirror.