Skip Victoria Falls for more Cape Town?
 

Hi all,

My wife and I are finalizing honeymoon plans for next May (too far!). We are planning to travel to South Africa from NYC in late May for 12 days, ending the trip in Portugal to meet family and would appreciate input on one aspect of the trip - more Capetown time v Victoria Falls?

Our itinerary is as follows:

3 nights in Capetown (inc 1 day day-trip to wine lands)
2 nights in Victoria Falls
6 nights on Safari in Botswana
A night in Johannesburg
Several days in Portugal

A good friend from SA thinks 3 days in Cape Town is too short. We are considering doing 5 and cutting the Victoria Falls part. Is this a bad idea? I’d really like to see the falls, and maybe rhinos!, but don’t want to cut short a rare visit to Cape Town either.

We are both early 30s, live in a big city already and like a little adventure. That said, we also enjoy visiting interesting new cities.

Feedback would be appreciated!

Can’t see how to edit- more info for context-

For Victoria Falls we would be staying in Tongabezi Lodge (Livingstone)

On Safari we would be at Selina Explorers Camp followed by Duba Plains

Well, first, congratulations! Sounds like a terrific honeymoon.

My opinion (others may disagree) is that while Victoria Falls are quite dramatic, you've got so many options in SA that you could easily take the Victoria Falls days and apply them to the Cape, or maybe take the two days to drive down the Garden Route from, say, Port Elizabeth to Cape Town via the winelands. If you flew to Port Elizabeth you could spend a day visiting Addo Elephant National Park (self-drive so go at your own pace) then head down to, say Plettenberg Bay on the Garden Route, then from there to Cape Town via Franschhoek or Stellenbosch.

This would simplify logistics and probably be quite a lot cheaper than the Victoria Falls/Livingstone days, if that's a consideration.

I've been to CT twice, for about a week each time. Three days is too short. I would give VF a miss. It's impressive, yes, but given the logistics of going there and what you will miss in CT, my vote would be for more CT.

I did 6 days in CT which included a day in the winelands and 6 days wasn't enough.

It's a fantastic city with lots to do in the area.

I would cut out Victoria Falls. It's nice but not worth it IMO.

Since this is your Honeymoon you may want to consider 3 nights in CT and then travel to Hermanus and stay 2 nights at Birkenhead House for 2 nights. It's drop dead gorgeous, romantic and right on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. I've stayed there 3 times and always seen whales too. It's about 1.5 hour drive from CT.

I've also stayed at La Residence overlooking the vineyards in Franschoek. It too is gorgeous and very romantic with each room totally different than the others (same is true for Birkenhead House).

I'm in the same dilemma while planning a sort of last minute trip in September. We have about 11 days not including intl travel to see Southern/South Africa and the original plan was to do:

5 nights near Kruger
2 nights near Vic Falls
3 nights near Cape Town

Coming from California we should find ourselves familiar with the climate and topography of the surrounding wine lands and even the garden route areas. It certainly seems like a nice area to visit although it may not be a more unique experience like perhaps Vic Falls and Chobe might be.

The main concern is Vic Falls a can't miss part of our rather tight trip? Expense wise it also adds more than $1200 for 2 people to do this. Flights to VFA/LVI/BBK are so expensive!

Definitely add to Cape Town. We originally planned to include Victoria Falls into our 3 week South Africa trip last year but quickly dropped it in favour of more time in Cape Town - there is so much to do and see there.