Travel planning for South Africa, Zambia & Zimbabwe (Africa)

Travelling to South Africa has always been a great dream of ours. Three weeks of adventure and experiences were ahead of us and we have put together a great route for this time. Here you will find information about our travel planning.

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Our travel plans for South Africa & Zimbabwe

South Africa was a country we didn’t know much about at first. But we definitely wanted to see the cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg, take a ride along the Garden Route, go for a game in Kruger National Park and finally we were looking for a way to make a short detour to the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. For this we had taken 3 weeks vacation and created the following route with a lot of pushing back and forth:

» Cape Town (Sightseeing) – 5 nights
» Hermanus (Garden Route) – 1 night
» Mossel Bay (Private Game Reserve) – 3 nights
» Hazyview (Panorama Route) – 2 nights
» Kruger National Park (Safari) – 3 nights
» Thohoyandou (intermediate stop) – 1 night
» Pretoria & Johannesburg (Sightseeing) – 1 night
» Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe & Zambia Page) – 2 nights

We had first searched for a flight combination from “Frankfurt to Cape Town” for the outcoming flight and from “Johannesburg to Frankfurt” for the return flight. But such a fork flight would have been quite expensive. In the end, we decided to fly back and forth from Frankfurt to Johannesburg with Lufthansa and booked the flights to Cape Town and the Victoria Falls separately.

In total, we had 6 flights for this trip, which looked like this:

» Frankfurt > Johannesburg – Lufthansa – 318 €
» Johannesburg > Cape Town – Mango Airlines – 62 €
» George > Johannesburg – Kululu Airlines – 60 €
» Johannesburg > Victoria Falls – Air Zimbabwe – 137 €
» Victoria Falls > Johannesburg – Air Zimbabwe – 137 €
» Johannesburg > Frankfurt – Lufthansa – 318 €

For all flights together we paid almost 1,000 € per person.

Our flight from Frankfurt to Cape Town

The flight from Frankfurt to Johannesburg was in an A380 from Lufthansa and lasted a good 10.5 hours. We arrived in Johannesburg for just under 2.5 hours of stopovers. After entering the country, which is quick and easy for German citizens with our passport, we had to change to the Domestic Terminal. From here we went with Mongo Airlines to Cape Town, where we landed 2 hours later.

Flight Frankfurt Cape Town, Lufthansa, A380, Travel report

Our flight on the A380 to Cape Town

Our car rental for Cape Town

Since we had never been to South Africa before and have never actually driven in left-hand traffic, the topic of rental cars was also something we had been dealing with a little longer. It was especially important to us not to have a gear shift, but to rent an automatic vehicle in order to be able to concentrate completely on the traffic. Over billiger-mietwagen.de we had booked a rental car in the class VW Polo, which we could pick up directly at the airport in Cape Town near Hertz. For a rental period of 10 days we paid 282 euros with all insurances. When all the bureaucracy was done and we had the keys in our hands, we went to the center of Cape Town.

Car Rental, South Africa, Africa, Travel Report

Our car rental for South Africa

Our cape town hotel

For the first five nights we slept at the Hotel Park Inn by Radisson Cape Town Foreshore. We chose the hotel partly because of its good location. From here you can explore the most important parts of the city on foot. During this time we were able to park our rental car in the guarded hotel car park for a daily fee. We liked the hotel room very much. The daily breakfast was very tasty and was already included in the room rate.