Honeymoon in South Africa...in 3 weeks time?!

Yelof

After much debate, excitement and deliberation, we have finally decided to go to South Africa for our honeymoon 6th - 28th August...this year!!! Our budget for the entire trip is £5000...gulp!

We have seen that this isn't the best time of year for the beaches in S.A. but that it's good to see game, so we are hoping to go to Kruger. It also looks like it's easy to do a self-drive trip, which sounds good to us, with possibly camping en-route, but it sounds like the temperatures get really cold at night at that time of year..?

Ideally we would like something relaxing for the first 5 days and then a bit more of an adventure / exploration. We're not planning in staying in 'honeymoon' type accommodation all the time tho! We did (briefly) look into flying to Mauritius first and then to Johannesburg and then direct home, for which the flights (all direct with BA) were about £1200, which we thought was ok..ish, but it appears accommodation and things generally can be quite expensive in Mauritius as it's such a tourist haven...? Whereas flights direct with BA to Johannesburg (return) for our dates are £750.

Normally we would just book our flights and then sort out things like accommodation etc. when we were there, but neither of us have been to Africa before, plus we think that we want to cut down on as much of the stress as possible, so are thinking it would be good to get as much booked beforehand.

If you know SA (particularly what it's like in August and where the best places to go would be) or have done a self-drive trip we would love to hear from you! Any advice on how best to organise our itinerary and book it would be really (and truly!) appreciated.

Many thanks for reading,

Sarah

yzerfontein

Yelof wrote: »

After much debate, excitement and deliberation, we have finally decided to go to South Africa for our honeymoon 6th - 28th August...this year!!! Our budget for the entire trip is £5000...gulp!

We have seen that this isn't the best time of year for the beaches in S.A. but that it's good to see game, so we are hoping to go to Kruger. It also looks like it's easy to do a self-drive trip, which sounds good to us, with possibly camping en-route, but it sounds like the temperatures get really cold at night at that time of year..?

Ideally we would like something relaxing for the first 5 days and then a bit more of an adventure / exploration. We're not planning in staying in 'honeymoon' type accommodation all the time tho! We did (briefly) look into flying to Mauritius first and then to Johannesburg and then direct home, for which the flights (all direct with BA) were about £1200, which we thought was ok..ish, but it appears accommodation and things generally can be quite expensive in Mauritius as it's such a tourist haven...? Whereas flights direct with BA to Johannesburg (return) for our dates are £750.

Normally we would just book our flights and then sort out things like accommodation etc. when we were there, but neither of us have been to Africa before, plus we think that we want to cut down on as much of the stress as possible, so are thinking it would be good to get as much booked beforehand.

If you know SA (particularly what it's like in August and where the best places to go would be) or have done a self-drive trip we would love to hear from you! Any advice on how best to organise our itinerary and book it would be really (and truly!) appreciated.

Many thanks for reading,

Sarah

I live in Cape Town. My view is that August is a great time to visit South Africa. Like you mention, it's a good time to see game (low season, mostly sunny) and in the Western Cape the southern-right whales visit during the southern hemisphere spring (not to mention the fact that the flowers on the west coast are absolutely spectacular - althought you might only catch that towards the end of August). Temperature on the highveld does get cold at night, but nothing unmanageable (and hey, you're on honeymoon :T). There's tons of good places at Kruger - I enjoyed staying at the Malelane lodge there.

In terms of cheap flights, Qatar Airlines or Emirates are usually cheapest from the UK to South Africa, and Interlink, 1time, Kulula and Mango are the low cost carriers within South Africa.

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robdog1

Have a great honeymoon!, Kruger park is about 4 hours by car from Joburg, driving is easy, outside of towns the roads are quiet and you drive on the left, only thing to remember is that fuel is CASH only. I would reccomend that you stay in the park for 3 days use sanparks site to book a rondeval Lower Sabie and Olifants are nice camps, Skukuza is the main camp but it is large and a bit busy and impersonal. www.sanparks.org will give you plenty of info. Whilst you are in this part of SA have a look at the tourist spots, gods window, blyde river canyon, burkes pots,etc. a good place to stay to explore this part of SA is Hazyview. The only real peice of advice I can give is that SA is a big country and you can be tempted to do too much.

Yelof

Thanks guys - that's a great help. The Sanparks website is fantastic too. We're getting even more excited now! As we've got a good 3 weeks, we're thinking now of flying into Cape Town and spending 10 days on the Garden route before flying up to Jo'burg and exploring Kruger & Hazyview. Oh, we can't wait!!!