On Tue, 11 May 2004 22:04:13 -0600, "Jim"
wrote:
>My wife and I really crave a trip to SA in the next six months, but can't
>decide whether to do it ourselves or book a tour. Our primary goal is see
>big game (the "Top 5" and others) in the bush (and have a private bath at
>night!). We have traveled independently in many parts of the world, but
>usually take tours in "exotic" countries where there may be a serious
>language barrier or unusual risks. One of our ideas is to fly into Cape
>Town, rent a car and drive to one or two lodges in the so-called
>malaria-free zones in the capes or the Garden Route area. (If possible, we'd
>like to avoid the anti-malarial treatment.) Does this approach seem
>practical? And given the higher altitudes of these particular lodges, which
>months would be reasonably comfortable and still offer good viewing?
South Africa is a great country to visit independant. We don't like
the 'bushopping' way of travelling and prepared our trip at home and
'guestimated' times to see/do things and made a list of where we would
be at which dates and some preffered accomodation. Our travel agent
(who specialises in SA travel) then made a list of availlable
accomodations and after our approval booked all guesthouses and
hotels. He also booked our flight and renatl car (cheaper than what we
found :-) ).
From then on we where on our own... we enjoyed South Africa a lot and
hope to go back.. Next time we will not book accomodation in advance
though, as we found nothing was fully booked in July (except 'the
parks').
I have a travelogue of our trip(s) on my website (see sig).
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