C&L South African Adventure

[LN89]

Hi

Welcome to my pre-trippie for our fast approaching trip to South Africa.

I am Laura and my DH is Chris, are both 29 and live in South London. Here are some photos.





We love to travel to different countries but we originally were planning to go back to WDW in September this year. We have only been once for our honeymoon (Chris went twice as a child but it was my first time). I am desperate to go back, however we were considering putting it back a year, initially due to the price increase. Whilst I wanted to get back to WDW, I also can’t believe how quickly the three years have gone and don’t know if I would have been organised enough to book WDW in April 2017!

A member of my extended family has moved to SA for a few years and said anyone was welcome to visit. They live in Cape Town so we will be visiting CT but I have also always dreamed of doing a safari so we decided to make the most of it, take them up on the offer and team it with a safari.

We are flying to Johannesburg to drive to Kruger National Park. We spent some time researching safaris and stumbled upon Shindzela Bush Camp, a tented camp within Timbavati Private Nature Reserve. It was much more affordable than some of the others we had looked at because it was tents rather than lodges.

There are only 8 tents so finding availability isn’t easy, even when booking over a year in advance and we could only get Tuesday – Saturday so we planned the rest of the holiday around this. We decided to still fly on the Saturday as originally planned as we wanted to make the most of our annual leave from work.

I spent quite some time working out flights, direct flights were really expensive (£800 each), so we started to look at indirect ones. We worked out the cheapest way to do it was via Dubai to Johannesburg and then home from CT to London via Dubai again. These were £570 each and fly from Gatwick which suits us too! We would then book an internal flight to get between the two.

We land in Johannesburg at around 5.30am on the Sunday and will drive to Hoedspruit near Kruger National Park. We have hired a slightly bigger car than we would usually as we will be driving into Kruger National Park. I have never driven a car bigger than a fiesta so it will be interesting (disclaimer - all photos in the rest of the trippie have been borrowed from google).



I read about the number of sights near the Park so as we have all day, we will take our time stopping at Blyde River Canyon, Bourke’s Luck Pot Holes, Lisbon and Berlin Falls.





We then have two nights in this apartment, it looks gorgeous.



We are planning to do our own self drive in Kruger on the Monday, Hoedspruit is an hour away from the Phalaborwa Entrance. We are not expecting to see too much ourselves but you never know, plus we thought it will get us excited for the camp the next day .

We then move to the Sindzela Camp for four nights. We are so excited to stay here the camp itself looks amazing, the camp is unfenced so animals can appear in the camp. They take you out on two game drives a day as well as a walking safari instead of the morning drive. Here is some photos.









As the drive back to Johannesburg would take around 6 hours we decided it would be best to stay in a hotel by the airport on the Saturday night then fly down to Cape Town on the Sunday. That way we get to do the morning safari and can take our time to drive to Johannesburg rather than rushing to make a flight.

We booked an internal flight to Cape Town with Mango (their low cost airline) and fly at 9am, it is a 2 hour flight and my family are picking us up from Cape Town Airport. The flight was very reasonable - £90 for us both which includes luggage. We will then spend 7 nights with them in Cape Town.

We are currently in process of making our Cape Town plans but can’t believe how much there is to do! It is going to be a busy week. We want to explore Cape Town itself, visit Boulder Beach, cape point and I think we will also try to fit in the Robben Island tour (which includes the prison where Nelson Mandela was held).







I also discovered the Table Mountain abseil which we have booked to do .



One of my friends from work is also coincidentally in SA at the same time so we have decided to meet up in the vineyards one day and are planning to do the Franschhoek Wine Tram. You can book a transfer from Cape Town which is what Chris and I will do. We haven’t decided what route to book yet but will decide that soon .



If that wasn’t busy enough, we have also just been told about the whale watching at Hermanus which looks incredible and I think we want to try to find time to do it too!



Thank you for reading and any tips for South Africa or a safari are very welcome 🙂