Travel Review: Luxury Africa Safari, South Africa, Mozambique, Sabi Sands Game Reserve, Cape Town, Franschhoek

What a trip - at least the South Africa portion! Despite cool and sometimes wet weather, each of our stops in South Africa (Cape Town, Franschhoek and Sabi Sand) were delightful!  We did not find the trip out to White Pearl to be worth the cost, time or effort, and would not return there (see the what would you do differently section below).

This Africa safari travel company was very flexible in putting together an itinerary based on our preferences and happily provided input and suggestions based on their experiences. They also sent a lovely gift with our final travel documents and itinerary and provided responses to our questions within a few days.

We experienced only one hiccup in our itinerary when a charter flight they'd booked for us was cancelled the day prior, and although the initial alternative travel plan offered was something we'd considered to be out of the question and dealt with quite poorly by the local South Africa contact (she told us there were no other options and that we should just enjoy the 7 hour drive from Sabi Sand to Johannesburg), our main contact in the US worked to find additional options that made the disruption to our plans much less frustrating.

The only suggestions I have for this company are:

(1) Provide more details in the travel itinerary and send it earlier - by the time we received the itinerary, some of the recommended restaurants were fully booked during our stay so it was much too late to be able to use the helpful information provided.  Also, some details were missing that would have been helpful to know - ie, the name of the charter company operating the charter flight, the specific wine estates we'd be visiting, the name of our guide (or notification once that information was known).

(2) Provide more information on the differences between options offered (ie to do the beach portion of your trip in Mozambique, you'll need to get a Visa and your luggage will be restricted to 22 kilos in a soft-sided duffel, whereas if you choose a beach in Tanzania, you'll need to do x, y and z). We didn't realize all of the additional requirements going to Mozambique would lead to when booking, after being encouraged to go there over some of the other preferences we had by the agency.

(3) Check in with your guests along the way or immediately after their trip - while you wouldn't want to interrupt their holiday, a short email or leaving a letter/message with one of the hotels just checking in would be a nice gesture. When we had the hiccup arise and it was communicated by the receptionist at our safari lodge, we weren't sure who was working on a fix - the charter company, the lodge or the travel agency.