Cape Town, Sabi Sand Safari and Victoria Falls Honeymoon

Discover Africa and their trip advisor Megan Warrington did a fantastic job arranging our trip to Cape Town, Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe), and the Chobe River and Kwara Camp in Botswana. We originally planned this trip a few years ago, but had to cancel. Megan was able to resurrect our itinerary with a few improvements this year. The trip details they provided were very accurate and helped us in our planning (and packing). All the transfers/transportation went without a hitch. Greeters met us at each location and guided us to the appropriate next step.

All the accommodations they booked us in were top notch; better than we anticipated. In particular, they had booked us into a camp in the Okavanga delta run by the Kwando Safari company. When they Kwando company ended up closing the camp for renovations Megan made sure that Kwando upgraded our camp and we ended up at the amazing Kwara camp, their flagship location, with no additonal cost or bother for us. (That camp was amazing great wildlife, staff, food and “tents”.)

I would recommend Discover Africa and Megan to anyone planning a trip to the Southern Africa area for a safari or city visit.

I had received a glowing recommendation for Discover Africa from a member of my synagogue who has done multiple safaris with them. So when it came time to select a safari vendor for a once-in-a-lifetime wildlife safari for my daughter and I, I reached out to them. I’d done some research ahead of time and so knew that we were interested in Botswana, specifically the Okavango Delta. My contact/resource at Discover Africa was Susan Veldman and she was great.

She listened to what I told her in terms of what we were looking for and crafted a proposal that met our needs in terms of schedule, length, etc. Initially she had us ending our trip at Victoria Falls (my impression is most multiple-stop safaris in the region start or end there), but when I told her our focus was really on wildlife, she came up with an amended itinerary that subtracted Victoria Falls and added Chobe National Park. In short, she listened and responded to our input. We did 8 nights/9 days. We flew into Johannesburg, South Africa, from NYC via London. Those flights we booked on our own, but everything else and all the other flights (Johannesburg to Botswana, 3 bush flights to our lodges/accommodations, then back to Johannesburg from Kasane) were taken care of by Susan.

Plus we had dietary requirements (I’m a vegetarian and my daughter is allergic to dairy) that Susan communicated to the 3 lodges we stayed at and they came through with flying colors. I haven’t eaten so well in quite a while! We spent 3 nights at Kadizora Lodge (in the Delta), 3 nights at Saguni Lodge (eastern edge of the Delta, near Khwai and the Moremi Game Reserve) and two nights further east, at Elephant Valley Lodge outside of Kasane and adjacent to Chobe National Park.

Each lodge and experience was a little different, and we loved all three. Kadizora was the smallest of the three, and the most isolated — there weren’t many other lodges nearby and so we did not see a lot of other vehicles on our drives. The terrain in the area was flooded delta and savannah-style plain for the most part, with good/long visibility. Saguni was a little larger and close to the village of Khwai; the terrain in the area was more scrub trees, as well as savannah, so visibility was often more circumscribed. The wildlife in both areas of the Delta was similar, and both of the Okavango lodges were near water (Saguni especially).

At both the Okavango lodges we supplemented our drives with water-borne excursions, including two mokoro (traditional dug-out canoes, propelled by guides with long poles — think of Venice and gondolas) rides which were fantastic. We loved our guides at all three lodges, but bonded especially with Action at Suguni — he was very knowledgeable and a real gem. Elephant Valley Lodge was the largest of the three we stayed at; it is near Kasane, a significant town near the borders of Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia. Paved roads, shopping centers, more people. And Chobe National Park was by far the most crowded of the three areas we drove in. And in the national park, as opposed to the Delta, guides were not permitted to take their vehicles off-road in search of game. More than compensating for this, though, was the sheer volume and density of wildlife in Chobe NP. It was amazing.

In short, Discover Africa delivered a perfect wildlife safari for my daughter and I which met all our (very high) expectations. We couldn’t have been happier, and Susan was always available for questions, both before and during the trip. We were in good hands throughout!

An outstanding safari trip made seamless and wonderful by Adelle at Discover Africa. From start to finish this trip was amazing, the flights were well organised our pickups and transfers were on time and comfortable. We stayed the first two nights at Jocks a private concession in Kruger and everything from the food, accomodation and our wildlife guide Patrick was out of this world.

We then transferred to Arathusa Lodge in Sabi Sands game reserve and while different experience again the accomodation, food and our tracker Adam and Guide Geoff were outstanding. Not a single complaint and felt Adelle did a wonderful job of making things easy for us when the enormous choice of accomodation options and places to stay can be overwhelming. We saw the big 5 and many other animals and I would recommend Discover Africa and Adelle to anyone I speak with!

Matthys handled our entire trip. Recommended a ten day trip based off my interests. The trip was flawless. Every detail from transportation to lodging was handled and well documented. We visited Cape Town, Victoria Falls, and Kruger. Everything exceeded our expectations. Six out of five stars. We even saw the Big 5 at Kruger National Park.

We just came back from our outstanding 7-day trip to Botswana and Zimbabwe organized by “Discover Africa”.

From the very first moment on when we got in touch with Megan from Discover Africa about 7 month prior to the trip everything was very professional. Megan was very proactive and reactive to all kind of questions and also gave some important information which helped us to select the right camps.

We have been in Okavango Delta and stayed at Camp Okavango. This is a very magic place. If you are coming from a busy city in an industrialized country and suddenly you are put in this significant landscape, is a really outstanding experience. The people in this camp are so friendly and each individual goes far the extra mile to make the stay as extraordinary as it was. The wildlife guides are very experienced and the best part of this camp are the hikes, together with the guides. We have collected so many impressions, which would be far too much for this review.

Just one of “never forget” experiences have been the approach during a hike to a pride of lions which we viewed just like 20 meters away. This is lifetime experience we will never forget. After that we continued to Chobe Game Lodge, which was very different from Okavango, but also very beautiful and outstanding.

Chobe is a very interesting area. We have seen 4 out of the “Big 5” there. Unfortunately no Rhinos, but I think that’s become very rare these days Unfortunatly. Chobe Game Lodge is also an excellent place and the people are doing an outstanding service there. After Chobe we continued to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. We stayed and Victoria Falls Safari Lodge.

Victoria Falls is something very impressing to see. I think once been there, it’s very impressive but we not go there again. Besides the Falls there is noch much around and the area is very expensive and only focuses on tourists. Vic Falls Safari Lodge is nice, but from a Service standpoint not comparable to either Camp Okavango or Chobe Game Lodge.

Overall, from an organizational standpoint, Discover Africa organized a great trip and everything worked out very well. We never had a situation where we felt uncomfortable or did not now how to go ahead. I would express my sincere appreciation to Megan and the whole team at Discover Africa who made this trip possible for us. For sure in future we will again go with Discover Africa.

The service received from the staff at Discover Africa was fantastic. Dealing with Megan was a pleasure. She was able to create a unique package for us that both exceeded our expectations and fitted within our budget. My fondest memory was definitely the trip to Devil’s Pool at Victoria Falls. It really was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and something I will never forget.