If you are a reader of my blog, you know that we were stuck in Cape Town’s harbor on a cruise ship at the beginning of the pandemic. After a few days floating in Table Bay, the South African government allowed us to go directly to the airport and fly out. Let’s just say that my memories of the visit are less than stellar. I have lots of pictures of Table Mountain taken from the balcony of our cabin and unpleasant memories of the airport and those that worked there as we departed.
We rebooked a cruise around Africa during the pandemic, followed by a tour from Cape Town to Johannesburg, but that was cancelled by both the cruise line and tour company.
Now that the pandemic is over, we decided to give it another try. We decided to skip the cruise part and go directly to the tour part this time. We booked a 12-day tour from Cape Town to Johannesburg with a couple of game drives along the way.
Our flight from Chiang Mai to Cape Town was over 30 hours long, including layovers in Bangkok and Dubai. The Dubai airport was something else – if you ever need to shop for high-end goods at 2 am, this is your place! We flew on Emirates and have nothing but good things to say about them. The lounge in Dubai was fabulous. I’m all about the buffet and theirs was top notch. We arrived in Cape Town around 11:30 in the morning. We passed through immigration quickly and were met by our taxi driver. I had pre-booked a taxi through booking.com which we have had great luck with on previous trips. Our driver was very friendly and outgoing. He dropped us at a hotel and took off. Notice I said “a” hotel? Not a typo. We went to the front desk to check in and no reservation could be found in our name. I told the woman helping us that we were on a Gate 1 tour, but she had no record of that, either. I was wondering whether we had arrived on the wrong date, or just what the problem was. Apparently, the taxi driver had dropped us at the wrong hotel – we were booked at the Southern Sun Waterfront; he took us to the Southern Sun Cape Sun.
The doorman was very helpful and kind after we figured out what the issue was. He suggested taking an Uber as a cab was likely to rip us off. He also said that oftentimes, Uber doesn’t show up when you book them. Fortunately, this time the driver appeared and took us to the correct hotel which did have our reservation. As we were checking in, so was our tour guide, Don! He was a friendly, outgoing guy and it was nice to have a chance to chat with him a bit before meeting up with the rest of the group.
Typically, the first day of a Gate 1 tour is for arrivals, and so there are no activities or meetings planned. We had the remainder of the day to recover from our flights. We hung out at the hotel, had an early dinner, and went to bed to get caught up on our sleep.
The next day, we started our tour. I am posting a separate page for each place we visited:
Game Drive #1: Hluhluwe Imfolozi Park
Eswatini (Swaziland) and Matsamo Village Tour
Game Drive #2: Kruger National Park
This was an amazing trip. I have a few suggestions if you are fortunate enough to travel to this area. First, bring a camera with a good zoom lens. Some in our group that only had camera phones were not able to get the quality of pictures that those carrying DSLRs were able to. I normally have to edit my pictures; the pictures I posted (except for the close-up of the leopard) are not edited at all. I used a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ300 that has an excellent zoom.
A good pair of binoculars is also needed. We have a couple of pairs of good binoculars back in Seattle. Unfortunately, I did not think to pack them and so bought a pair in Thailand (since that is where we flew from). Suffice it to say that they were not top-quality glass…
Some of the wildlife was very close to our vehicle – impalas and nyalas were everywhere – no binoculars needed. But lions, zebras, and giraffes were quite a distance away. Without either binoculars or a good zoom lens on your camera, you wouldn’t be able to see them as well as you might wish.
The power plugs in South Africa are different than most places; a typical universal adapter will not work. I bought one from Amazon that did not work except in the last two hotels we were at. Here is a picture of what you need:
One other thing to pack? A washcloth. Only one of our hotels provided them, so if you like to use one, bring your own.
It is very windy on the cape so if you have longer hair, bring something to tie it back with. Or wear a hat that stays on your head in windy conditions. Also bring sunscreen and insect repellent. We chose not to do anti-malaria prophylaxis and relied on a superior quality deet spray for Kruger.
I will leave you with the infamous words of our tour guide, Don, “Never, never, ever, ever let someone help you at an ATM!”.
travelswithheather 