Sabi Sands Safari and Mauritius

I chose a travel agency for four reasons. Years in business, quantity and quality of reviews, customisability, and local expertise. Discover Africa and my agent, Adelle, met or exceeded all expectations. I gave Adelle my budget and modified one of their suggested tours. Five stars.

This trip was a 20th anniversary/bucket list trip. From the time we landed in South Africa until we sadly had to depart, we were hosted like no other country we’ve visited. Our travel agent, Dianne DuPlessis from Discover Africa, was amazing. We described the trip we were looking for and the type of accommodations and she completely nailed it. All of our accommodations were perfect. We meet so many wonderful host and guests at the different lodges. The food very delicious as was the water & cocktails! 🙂

We were able to see the big 5, little 5, ugly 5, and many others. Our guides and trackers were the best at explaining the ecology of the African Savannah. We learned so much. We highly recommend Dianne and Discover Africa as well as the lodges we stayed at.

Patty's South African Safari Experience

I used to live in South Africa and knew where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. Planning this trip from afar was made SO MUCH EASIER with Matthys’s expertise! He brought the trip I was envisioning to life and was always quick to respond to my emails. Thank you Matthys and team! We had a wonderful trip, everything went smoothly!

We had a rough idea of a trip to South Africa & Zimbabwe but we were unsure of selecting accommodation, transfers etc. Megan at Discover Africa prepared an itinerary for us which we worked together on to produce a trip of a lifetime. Megan selected some fantastic hotels for us to stay in, organised all the internal flights, transfers and day tours.

The trip ran smoothly, every day was an amazing experience & the quality of operators, accommodation and transfers was superb. We organised a Zoom meeting with Megan to finalise the itinerary and payment details. Megan was lovely to deal with and no question was a trouble for her.

She supplied her own contact details for us to use before the trip & while we were travelling. Every detail was covered. We had a trip of a lifetime and we would highly recommend Megan at Discover Africa to anyone thinking of travelling to Africa.

Our only advice is always to remember to take an international covid vaccination certificate while travelling overseas.

Discover Africa , and Matthys van Aswegen in particular, was a pleasure to work with. Firstly, his patience and understanding is a true fine attributive of his. We started talking about a safari to South Africa in mid-2019. We had both phone calls and email exchanges, and he was always responsive with concrete intelligent answers.

In fact, he sent me many options/packages that were only in Kruger, and others that included Botswana, whatever combination I asked him for, he put together happily. However, by the end of 2019, not knowing about Covid yet, we simply weren’t ready to go on Safari yet. He never put any pressure and was quite understanding.

We then spent most of 2020 emailing back and forth again during the pandemic, with many more questions and options. In Dec 2020, I finally booked a Safari with him to Mala Mala camp in Sabi Sands(one camp , 4 nights, seven game drives), as well as visits to Johannesburg and Cape Town.

We continued to exchange emails during 2021, updating and tweaking the itinerary, when suddenly the Omicron variant hit during Thanksgiving. Since there was MUCH uncertainty with Omicron and our trip was a few weeks away, I couldn’t take chance with my family’s well-being and potentially getting stuck in South Africa.

So I postponed the entire trip for a year to Dec 2022. Matthys, once Again, was only understanding and flexible! He helped me re-book everything to Dec 2022 AND I even rearranged the itinerary completely, and he was accommodating and cooperative. He was also able to transfer all of my pre-payments for Mala Mala, other hotels, flights, to Dec 2022 so that not one penny was lost!

In short, he was amazing ! We just returned a few days ago and the safari at Mala Mala was something me and family will always treasure. We also very much enjoyed Cape Town and the winelands! Discover Africa gets an A+ !

This was a holiday of 3 attempts.

Matthys clearly extremely knowledgable, and from experience, about the areas/lodges we visited. The transfers, flights and accommodations were all top notch and nothing went by the wayside.

The trip moved seamlessly from SA, through Kruger, Zimbabwe, 3 Botswana lodges and back to Jo’burg.

Value for money?

Definitely really good quality accommodations and the safari guides were brilliant. We were never crowded into any vehicle we always had plenty of space. The food was amazing and the staff at all establishments were incredibly friendly and accommodating.

Nothing was too much trouble and they went far and above than they needed too.

We loved it so much we are planning to come back in 2024 and do the garden route and some different safari experiences. Missed the Rhino but saw all the other top 4 plus 5 puppy wild dogs/5 adults and 3 leopards. Loads of lions and huge amounts of elephant, bison, water buffalo and numerous other animals.

As Annie once said “I’ll be back!”