Having just returned from the Experience South Africa tour I thought it would be useful to do a review in order to help future travellers get a better understanding of the extent of the coach travel.
This is a good tour and packs in a lot, but could have been great.
Upon arrival in CapeTown at 8 am ish I had personally been travelling for 20 hours and just wanted to check in to the hotel and freshen up.
I appreciate the itinerary stated that we may go up Table Mountain on arrival. I presumed this was because it was enroute from the airport and that we would then go straight to the hotel. As it happens it was too windy to go up Table Mountain.
I therefore expected to go to the hotel but instead we went to a city park and then Kirstenboch botanical gardens. We finally checked in around 4pm by which time i was shattered and felt filthy. Not a great start to the trip.
Most of us were in agreement that the hotel should have been booked so that we could check in on arrival, freshen up and reset. The trip up Table Mountain could then be done later in the afternoon.
With the exception of a day in CapeTown and a day in Knysna, there followed early starts and long days on the coach.
In order to get to the lodge near Kruger we flew from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg, stayed in a very poor hotel in Pretoria overnight, followed by a 7 hour coach journey to the lodge. The journey was mainly unremarkable from a scenery perspective, improving only for the last couple of hours on the Panorama Route. We were due to make a couple of panoramic stops however there was a strike on so we weren’t able to stop.
When we finally arrived at the Lodge we realised there was an airport 10 minutes away and we could have flown directly from Port Elizabeth to White River the previous day thus avoiding staying in Pretoria and a long boring unnecessary coach journey.
After 3 fabulous nights at the lodge near Kruger we then had an even more boring 7 hour coach journey back to Johannesburg where we stayed overnight to catch our flight the following evening rather than flying directly to J'burg for our connecting international flight.
By flying too and from White River we could have had an extra night on the Garden Route and an extra night at Kruger. This would have provided 2 well needed relaxation/ reset days and avoided 2 unnecessary coach journeys.
it is a vast country and coach travel is unavoidable in order to experience the 3 distinctly different area visited on this tour however, the itinerary doesn't reflect the full extent and time spent on a coach and 2 of those days could have been avoided.
Overall this is a good tour with some fantastic experiences and bucket list sights however, with a couple of tweaks to the itinerary could be so much better.
