South Africa

[Pag]

Has anyone been?

We've got a couple of friends over there who we met on a previous Contiki, live in Pretoria, so we'll visit them and probably do Cape Town and Kruger NP.

Anyone have any suggestions on things we shouldnt miss? We only have two weeks at a maximum over New Year before flying to Egypt.

[Psyber]

Has anyone been?
We've got a couple of friends over there who we met on a previous Contiki, live in Pretoria, so we'll visit them and probably do Cape Town and Kruger NP.
Anyone have any suggestions on things we shouldnt miss? We only have two weeks at a maximum over New Year before flying to Egypt.

I went to South Africa in 2009, but it was specifically to go to Kruger National Park.
I spent only a few hours in a hotel in Johannesburg between planes.

Kruger is superb. Our group started by spending 3 days and nights camping in tents near a waterhole in (with armed Rangers) and going for pre-sunrise walks in the veldt with them. Apart from that we spent 7 more days inside the park sleeping in the round huts at established and fairly secure camps, and travelling by day in open vehicles as we worked our way through the park from South to North.

"Secure camps" is relative - electric fences don't seem to keep out Warthogs, Silver Monkeys or Baboons.
At one camp just outside Kruger at the end of the trip I was sitting nursing a cat outside my tent and feeding it cheese when a passing Negro employee of the camp did a double take, then stopped, and told me I was nursing on my lap an African Wild Cat. (That's why my travel doctor strongly recommended I have Rabies vaccinations for my more recent trip to India - he thinks I'm reckless.)

Some of the group did the train trip from J'burg to Cape Town and, on return, said they'd loved it.
But that seemed a bit "citified" to me so I didn't sign up for it.