My fiance and I are finalizing our S. African honeymoon for May 2007 (can't wait - far too far away) and thanks in large part to this board, have gotten our itenerary and hotels entirely sorted. However, one leg of our trip has us driving from Cape Town down to Tsala/Garden Route and then up to Franschoek. We need a recommendation for a reliable, reasonable rental car company out of Cape Town - preferably one which would deliver to Cape Grace and allow us to drop off at the airport. Any ideas? (As always, you all are lovely!) Also - anything special we should know about driving in S. Africa/Western Cape? Thanks so much.

Avis will deliver, and of course would be happy with the return at the Airport. They have a luxury car division, which will stock the vehicle with beverages, your favourite Cd's etc. As the title suggest they offer quality cars too.

What to look out for. Keep left and pass right!
It is customary, although not legal) to ease over the median to allow faster cars to pass on single lane highways even on dual carriage ways. The passing vehicle will blinks its hazards in approval once passed.

Vehicles approaching that flash lights do so to warn you of a variety of things. Most often to caution you that there is police activity ahead: typically a cop hiding in the brush waiting to trap you for speeding. Other cautions could indicate an accident or possibly animals crossing the road such as a troupe of baboons and so on.

Other than that general road courtesy should apply.

i used europcar. they delivered to camp's bay with no charge and i had a brand new toyota that i dropped off at the waterfront when i was done. no additional charge.

I've just returned from Cape Town. We used Budget car rental - had no problems and reasonably priced. They also have a 24hr office at Cape Town airport. By the way in South Africa they call traffic lights 'Robots'.

Thanks, all! I actually found a great deal through Alamao - a Benz for less than $500 for 5 nights. There is a thread on tripadvisor that I found on this, and they gave the following very helpful link:
http://www.travel-library.com/carren...ica/cape_town/

When I was planning our 5 week trip I looked at a number of different car hire companies before settling on Avis for both segments. We picked the first car up at Cape Town airport and returned it at Port Elizabeth airport and we picked the second car up at Durban airport and returned it at Jo'burg airport.

My initial research suggested that some of the local companies might be cheaper - Tempest came out well when comparing basic costings as did a couple of others.

But when I started adding in costs for extras such as an additional driver, unlimited mileage, one way drop off fee (when returning to a different location to pick up), increasing cover to super for CDW, theft and damage, an extra spare tyre for the more remote safari segment, extra charge to take the car into Swaziland... the picture changed.

The biggest difference was that some of the companies did not let me pay extra to reduce the excess payable in case of accident and their excess payments were huge - Tempest wanted 9,000 Rand!!!

Oh and some companies did not cover us for driving on anything other than tarmac road surfaces which meant the car would not have been covered when driving on the dirt roads predominant in the national parks!

Seriously, car hire is all hunky dory if everything goes ok and many travellers are lucky but when it does go wrong it can be a nightmare if you've not read the small print of your rental policy.

Spend the time and do the research (and a more complete price comparison) first and you won't be surprised.

Here's the list I looked into at the time; some of these links may be out of date, I haven't checked them.

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

Oh and when you collect a car, make sure you inspect it visually first and INSIST on a member of staff noting any existing scratches on the rental document. When we picked one of ours up the staff member at first said the car was due to be sold off soon so not to worry but that wouldn't have stopped someone unscrupulous at the other end trying to blame us for some of the scratches and dents if we'd not had them in writing.

Oh and if the rental document isn't clear on TOTAL price including all the various extras do as we did. We asked the staff member at the branch where we collected it to work out the ABSOLUTE total (assuming we returned it with a full tank) and write that total on the document and initial it.

When we returned the car at Jo'burg the total they asked me to pay was much higher. I asked them to explain it and they couldn't and I was able to persuade them to sort it out only because I had this woman's initials by the original total. They called her and did then reduce it to that price but refused to explain why they had a higher rate coming through or apologise.

That said, I'd still go with Avis again because of the other issues I mentioned above in terms of pricing, dirt road cover, reducing excess and increasing insurance cover.