Go365 Travel

Big Five & Two Oceans

Your eight days in South Africa, run by people who live on the ground you are selling.

Karan,

Thank you for your time, and for sending the programme through in full. Having the whole week in front of us made this a great deal easier to do properly.

Before the detail, one thing about who you would be working with. I was born on the West Coast and I have spent my life on this ground. From the age of eight until I was sixteen I lived on the edge of Klein Constantia and trained as a runner on the gravel roads that run between those estates — which is day five of this programme. I live in Hermanus now, on a coast my family have been coming to for sixty years: my father before me, my son after me. I have also built and run a wine estate, a safari lodge, hotels and guest houses, so I have stood on both sides of the desk — the one your guests complain at, and the one that has to fix it.

I mention it because you will be talking to other people, and most of what they send you will be the same three hotels and the same coach at a slightly different number. What is different here is that the ground in this programme is ground I know personally, and that when something goes wrong at six on a Sunday evening you will be speaking to me rather than to a duty desk.

What follows is the week set out the way we would run it on the ground. Six days, hour by hour. A page on each of the three hotels. One net rate across your five departures. And the extensions we would put in front of your passengers.

Every day carries the reasoning beside it — where the timing is tight, where the weather can take a stop away, and where an hour can be handed back to your guests. Between them those choices are worth about four hours of the week.

Anything here you would like changed, tell me and it is changed.

John Sparks

Visitors to Africa

Three things to read

The six days on the groundday one to day seven What it costsone net rate, five departures Add-onsextensions and paid extras

The three hotels

A page on each, because the beds are the largest line in the rate and the only one that moves with the calendar.

The Palace of the Lost CitySun City · night one Peermont MetcourtEmperors Palace · night two The RockefellerForeshore, Cape Town · nights three to five

Five departures, one rate

April, July, August, October and November 2027, all at the same net rate. December is set aside for now — the Cape over Christmas is a different set of numbers and we would rather take it separately than bury it in an average.

April July August October November

2027, with the first departure the pilot. Now that the year is settled, the Palace can be contracted as a proper series across all five rather than booked one at a time — which is what keeps the hook in the programme when Sun City fills. Send us the five dates as early as you can. We would also put extra hands on the first one: a second guide riding along at our cost, and a written report to you the same week. The first departure is the one that decides whether there is a second year.

What we bring to it

The Palace, held

Five departures is around ninety room nights a year at Sun City. We would contract that as a series rather than book it departure by departure, which is what keeps the hook in the programme when the resort fills.

Drivers inside their hours

Two days on this programme run long. Day two is handled by the timing — lunch on the road puts the coach at Sun City by early afternoon and the reserve’s rangers take the evening, so no second driver is needed. Day three cannot be fixed that way: it runs from a Sun City breakfast to an airport hotel at ten at night. A relief driver meets the coach at the boma and takes the hour in. That cost is already inside the rates.

Days built in the right order

Day five takes Constantia in the morning light and the West Coast after lunch, so nobody crosses the city twice. Day six takes Cape Point before Boulders, so nobody crosses the peninsula twice. Day two puts lunch on the road and the Union Buildings as a ten-minute photograph, which lands the group at the Palace with the afternoon still ahead of them rather than an hour before the game vehicles. Between them that is most of a half-day handed back to your guests.

Weather that does not become a complaint

The cableway closes for wind and Chapman’s Peak closes in weather. Both have a written alternative the guide can take without telephoning anyone, and the group is told on day four rather than at the ticket office.

A Thai-speaking guide, included

Nationally registered guiding from the aircraft door on arrival to the check-in desk on departure, and a Thai speaker alongside for all six days on the ground. It is inside the rate, not an extra, because a guest who can ask a question in her own language has a different week from one who cannot.

Whose ground this is

John Sparks lived on the edge of Klein Constantia from the age of eight until he was sixteen and trained as a runner on the gravel roads between those estates — which is day five. He lives in Hermanus, where his family have been for sixty years. He is the author of September Tides. None of that costs you anything, and none of it can be bought by anyone quoting against us.

A note after every departure

A short written report the same week — what ran, what did not, what we would change. On every departure, not only the difficult ones.

Every day, if you need it

The contents page is the easier way in. These are here for jumping straight to one day.

1 — Bangkok & the night flight 2 — Pretoria & Sun City 3 — Lion Park & the boma 4 — Cape Town & the mountain 5 — Constantia & the coast 6 — The peninsula 7 — Departure 8 — Singapore to Bangkok

Photograph — elephant on the track, seen from inside the game vehicle

Big Five & Two Oceans · Go365 Travel

The six days

Day one to day seven. Day eight belongs to Singapore Airlines.

Eight days as your passengers count them. Six days as we count them, from the arrivals hall at O.R. Tambo to the check-in desk at Cape Town International.

The day numbers are yours, not ours. The programme counts Day One as the evening they leave Bangkok, which puts the arrival in Johannesburg on Day Two — and Day Eight is the morning they land back home. We have kept your numbering throughout rather than renumbering the six days on the ground, so that our pages, your brochure and the document in your passenger’s hand all say the same thing. If you would rather we counted the ground days one to six, say so and we will change it everywhere.

Getting there

Day One — Bangkok, and the night flightyour tour leader · in the air

On the ground

Day Two — Pretoria, and into the PilanesbergSun City · the Palace Day Three — The Lion Park, and game on the fireJohannesburg · Metcourt Day Four — South, and the mountain in the afternoonCape Town · Rockefeller Day Five — Constantia, the coast, and the evening freeCape Town · Rockefeller Day Six — Around the peninsulaCape Town · Rockefeller Day Seven — The early road outDeparture

Where they sleep

Night one	The Palace of the Lost City, Sun City
Night two	Peermont Metcourt, Emperors Palace
Nights three to five	The Rockefeller, Cape Town

As briefed, and the Palace is contracted first. It is the night the programme is sold on and we would not let it move.

Why two of the days run the way they do

Day five

Constantia first, while the light is still on the mountain. The ostrich farm and the West Coast after lunch. The Waterfront as the wind drops. Taken in that order nobody crosses the city twice, which is about ninety minutes of the guests’ day.

Day six

Chapman’s Peak has to be driven Hout Bay to Noordhoek, which fixes where the day starts. Cape Point before Boulders then means one crossing of the peninsula instead of two.

Big Five & Two Oceans · Sun City

Day Two

Day Two on the programme, and the first day on the ground. Off the overnight flight, through Pretoria, and into the Pilanesberg before the light goes.

The thinking

This is the hardest day of the eight, and the one that decides how the rest of the week feels. They land at ten past six in the morning having slept badly, and the day asks for the Voortrekker Monument, the Union Buildings, lunch, two and a half hours of road, and a game drive before dark.

Two things make it work. Lunch goes on the road at roughly the halfway mark rather than sat down in town — eating on the way uses road time that was going to be spent anyway, where a restaurant in Pretoria holds the group until one o’clock and only then starts two and a half hours of driving. And the Union Buildings becomes a ten-minute photograph with the coach standing and the engine running, which is all anyone needs of it.

Between them those two buy back better than two hours. The group is at the Palace by early afternoon instead of an hour before the vehicles leave, which means the guests who were counting on the pools get them — the first thing they ask about, and the thing the brochure photograph promised.

Lunch on the road also settles the driver. A man who collects the group at six in the morning cannot still be at the wheel at nine at night — it is neither legal nor safe, and it would mean a second driver on the coach. Eating on the way brings the coach in by early afternoon and his day ends there. The game vehicles come from the reserve with their own rangers driving, so nobody is behind a wheel who should not be.

Everything else is paced around the game drive. It is what they came for, and the gates close when they close.

The day, hour by hour

06:10

Landing

Met in the arrivals hall at O.R. Tambo, luggage handled, and onto the coach. Water, cold towels, and a working local SIM in the tour leader’s hand before anyone asks for one.
Mid-morning

The Voortrekker Monument

Forty minutes north. Seen from the outside as briefed, with the amphitheatre and the view back down over Pretoria.
Late morning

The Union Buildings — ten minutes

A drive past the terraced gardens and a ten-minute stop below the nine-metre Mandela, arms open above the city. That is the photograph that goes home, and it takes ten minutes to make. The coach does not park and nobody walks the gardens.
Late morning

West into the Magaliesberg

Straight onto the road out of Pretoria. An hour and a quarter through the hills, and most of the coach sleeps — which is the reason the road sits here and not later.
Midday

Lunch on the road

A proper seated lunch roughly halfway, ordered ahead so the group is served rather than kept waiting. Not a garage and not a buffet. An hour, and back on the coach.
Early afternoon

On to Sun City

The last hour and a quarter, through the platinum country of the North West. The Pilanesberg rises out of the flat ground on the right as you come in, which is the first sight of where they are going.
Early afternoon

The Palace of the Lost City

Arrive and check in with the afternoon still ahead of them. They walk in under the dome with time to look at it, which is a better first sight of the property than a corridor and a key.
Afternoon

Two hours of their own

The pools, the Valley of the Waves, or a bed. This is the hour the brochure photograph promised, and the day is built to leave room for it.
Late afternoon

Game drive, Pilanesberg

Open vehicles into the crater of an extinct volcano, nine or ten guests to a car. Elephant, rhino, buffalo and lion live inside it. Leopard does too and is seldom seen. We say that before the vehicles leave rather than after they come back. This is that drive — a breeding herd moving their calves through the last of the light, filmed on this road.
Evening

Dinner at the hotel

Back at the Palace after dark. An early night, and nobody argues.

Who is where

Guide	Registered national guide, with the party from the aircraft door to the aircraft door.
Driver	Collects at O.R. Tambo and drives through to Sun City. His day ends at the hotel at midday, well inside his hours.
Game rangers	The reserve’s own, driving the open vehicles. One per car, and they take the evening.
Tour leader	Travelling with the group from Bangkok.

On the road	Airport to the Monument 40 min · Pretoria to Sun City 2 hr 30, with lunch at the halfway mark
Game vehicles	One open 4×4 per ten guests
Accommodation	The Palace of the Lost City — night one of five
Meals	Lunch on the road, and dinner at the Palace

Why lunch is on the road and not in Pretoria. A seated lunch in the city holds the group until one o’clock, and only then starts two and a half hours of driving with a game drive to follow. In October and November that just works. In July, when the sun is down at half past five, it does not — and the evening drive is the thing they flew eleven hours for. Eating at the halfway mark uses road time that was going to be spent anyway, puts them at the Palace by early afternoon, and gives them the pools.

Big Five & Two Oceans · Johannesburg

Day Three

Down from the Pilanesberg, an afternoon in the city, and game on the fire.

The thinking

A softer day after a hard one, and deliberately so. The group has been awake since a Bangkok afternoon two days ago and the week still has Cape Town in it.

The Lion Park is an enclosure and we would describe it as one. The animals are close and the photographs are good. Guests should understand before they arrive that yesterday was the wild version and today is not — that single sentence is the difference between a good review and a poor one.

Mall of Africa earns its place on the programme. It is the last real chance to spend before the Cape, the coach can stand at a door rather than a kerb, and two hours there buys the group the rest they need.

The evening runs boma first, hotel afterwards. The boma houses are on the western side of the city and the hotel is out by the airport, so checking in between the two would mean driving the same hour twice. Dinner first and then one run in means the group is later to bed — but it is an hour on empty roads in the dark with most of the coach asleep, and they wake five minutes from the terminal. That is the right trade on the night before a morning flight.

It is also the day that needs a second driver. Yesterday’s man was at the wheel from half past five in the morning, and today runs from a Sun City breakfast to an airport hotel at ten at night. Nobody should drive an hour of dark motorway at the end of that, and we will not ask anyone to. A relief driver meets the coach at the boma and takes the run in. He costs us a few hundred rand a head and he is not negotiable — the one leg of this week where tiredness would actually matter is the one leg we are not prepared to gamble on.

The day, hour by hour

Morning

Breakfast, and the road south

Two hours back down from the Pilanesberg, through Rustenburg and the Magaliesberg.
Late morning

The Lion Park

Driven through and walked. Lion, white lion, white tiger, zebra and antelope, all in enclosures and all captive-bred.
Midday

Lunch

A local restaurant on the way in to the city.
Afternoon

Mall of Africa

Two hours at Waterfall, between Johannesburg and Pretoria. A hundred and thirty thousand square metres under one roof, and the only air conditioning on the programme.
Early evening

The boma dinner

Kudu, zebra, crocodile and buffalo over open fire, with drumming, under a roof of thatch and sky. It is a set piece, and it is the dinner most of the group will describe when they get home. Bags stay on the coach; nobody checks in first.
Evening

The road in to the airport

An hour east across the top of the city, with a relief driver at the wheel who has not worked today. It is dark, the roads are empty, and most of the coach sleeps. The guide says goodnight on the move rather than in a lobby.
Late

Peermont Metcourt, Emperors Palace

Keys are ready and the rooms are allocated before the coach arrives, so it is a walk from the door to the bed. They get in late and they sleep properly, and in the morning the terminal is five minutes away.

Who is where

Guide	As yesterday, throughout.
Driver	Yesterday’s. Sun City through to the boma, then his day ends.
Relief driver	Joins at the boma, fresh, and takes the hour in to the hotel. Inside our rate.
Tour leader	With the group.

On the road	Sun City to Johannesburg 2 hr 15 · the boma to the airport 1 hr
Accommodation	Peermont Metcourt, Emperors Palace — night two of five
Meals	Breakfast, lunch and dinner
Note	Bags stay on the coach all day — the Lion Park, the mall and the boma

A late night, on purpose. This is the one evening of the week that ends after ten, and it is the right evening for it. Tomorrow is a domestic flight, not a six o’clock departure, and the hotel is five minutes from the terminal. Nobody is woken early and nobody sits in traffic. We would tell the group at breakfast that tonight runs late, so the last hour on the coach reads as the end of a good day rather than a delay.

Big Five & Two Oceans · Cape Town

Day Four

Two hours in the air, and the mountain in the afternoon.

The thinking

The mountain is the largest single risk on this programme. The cableway closes for wind, it closes without warning, and it is the one thing most likely to turn a good week into a complaint letter.

So we treat this afternoon as the first attempt rather than the only one. Day six has slack in it, and we would hold that slack rather than fill it. If the cable car runs today, day six stays exactly as briefed. If it does not, the mountain moves and the peninsula absorbs the change.

Tell the group on the coach from the airport, not at the ticket office. A group that has been warned is disappointed. A group that has not been warned is angry, and they are angry with the guide standing in front of them.

The day, hour by hour

Morning

Breakfast, and O.R. Tambo

Ten minutes to the terminal from Emperors Palace. This is the whole argument for the hotel being where it is rather than where the brochure says it is.
Late morning

Johannesburg to Cape Town

Two hours. The descent runs over the Hottentots Holland and down into False Bay, which is worth the left-hand windows.
Midday

Lunch

A local restaurant on the way in from the airport.
Afternoon

Table Mountain

The rotating car, six minutes to the top, and an hour on the plateau. Maclear’s Beacon is further than this group will have time for. The short circuit above the upper station is not, and it is where the photographs are.
Evening

Dinner

Dim sum, as briefed. Cape Town’s Chinese restaurants sit in the southern suburbs rather than the centre, which is twenty minutes each way and worth building into the evening.

Who is where

Guide	Cape guide takes over on arrival, and stays to departure.
Driver	Cape driver and coach from the airport.
Tour leader	With the group.
Johannesburg team	Stands down after the airport drop.

In the air	Johannesburg to Cape Town, 2 hr 05
Baggage	Checked through, 20 kg on the domestic leg
Accommodation	The Rockefeller, Cape Town — night three of five
Meals	Breakfast, lunch and dinner

If the cableway is closed for wind, Table Mountain moves to day six and the afternoon runs to Signal Hill and the Bo-Kaap instead. The guide carries both versions of the day and does not need to telephone anyone to make the decision.

The domestic allowance is twenty kilograms, not thirty. Your passengers fly in on an international ticket with a larger allowance and will pack to it. The Johannesburg–Cape Town leg is twenty kilograms checked, and excess is paid at the counter by the guest. Say it in the joining instructions and again at the boma on day three, and nobody is surprised at the airport.

Big Five & Two Oceans · The Cape

Day Five

The oldest wine ground in the country, the West Coast, and the evening their own.

The thinking

This day runs Constantia first, the West Coast after lunch, and the Waterfront in the evening. It is built that way on purpose, and the order is what makes it work.

Constantia in the morning while the light is still on the mountain, the ostrich farm and the West Coast after lunch, and into the Waterfront as the wind drops. Nobody crosses the city twice and nobody spends an hour and a half on a road they have already seen.

Groot Constantia is the part of this day we would not change. John Sparks lived on the edge of Klein Constantia from the age of eight until he was sixteen and trained as a runner on the gravel roads between these estates. The guide on this coach will have been told exactly what to point out and where.

The day, hour by hour

Morning

Constantia

Twenty-five minutes out of town through the oaks. Groot Constantia, where South African wine began in 1685 — the manor house, the old cellar, and a tasting in the gardens. The guide tells them about Vin de Constance on the way in: the sweet wine Napoleon asked for in exile on Saint Helena and had shipped to him until he died, and that Jane Austen and Dickens both wrote into their novels. It is the oldest story in South African wine and it takes ninety seconds to tell.
Late morning

The road between the estates

Optional and short. A gravel track runs through the vines between the estates with the mountain above it. Twenty minutes on foot for those who want it, and the coach shadows the route for everyone else.
Midday

Lunch

Above the valley, looking down the length of it.
Afternoon

West Coast Ostrich Farm

Forty minutes north at Melkbosstrand. The feeding, the eggs, and the photograph of somebody standing on one, which every group takes and nobody regrets.
Late afternoon

The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront

Dropped at the clock tower with the evening free. Shops, the harbour, the seals on the pontoons, and Robben Island sitting out in the bay.
Evening

Their own

Dinner is the guests’ choice and the guests’ account, as briefed. The guide stays until the last group has a table and a way back to the hotel.

Who is where

Guide	Throughout, and stays at the Waterfront into the evening.
Driver	One. A short day on the road once the order is corrected.
Tour leader	With the group.

On the road	About 95 km as set out here · about 150 km as briefed
On foot	About 1.5 km, entirely optional
Accommodation	The Rockefeller, Cape Town — night four of five
Meals	Breakfast and lunch

Big Five & Two Oceans · The Peninsula

Day Six

Around the peninsula, the penguins, and lobster at the water.

The thinking

Chapman’s Peak decides the shape of this day, not preference. Coaches may drive it only from Hout Bay south to Noordhoek. Northbound it is closed to anything over 2.1 metres wide, which is every coach built. Hout Bay first, as briefed, is therefore correct and we would not change it.

What we would change is the second half. The programme crosses to Simon’s Town for the penguins and then doubles back south to Cape Point. We take Cape Point first, running down the Atlantic side through Scarborough, and collect Boulders on the way home up False Bay — one crossing of the peninsula instead of two. The penguins are also better later in the day, when the birds come in off the water.

Chapman’s Peak closes in bad weather as well. If it is shut the day runs over Ou Kaapse Weg and nothing else about it changes. The guide makes that call at Hout Bay and does not telephone anybody to do it.

The day, hour by hour

Early

Hout Bay, and the seals

Out to Duiker Island and back, about forty minutes. Cape fur seals on the rock in their thousands, and the Atlantic swell that comes with them. Anyone who does not travel well on water is better off on the quay, and should be told so before the boat leaves.
Mid-morning

Chapman’s Peak Drive

Nine kilometres cut into the cliff face between Hout Bay and Noordhoek, a hundred and fourteen bends, six hundred metres of Atlantic below the outside wheel. One stop at the viewpoint, which is all the parking allows.
Late morning

Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope

Into the reserve down the Atlantic side through Scarborough. The funicular to the old lighthouse, the sign at the Cape of Good Hope, and baboons which are not to be fed and which will take a bag straight out of a hand. This is the Cape.
Midday

Lunch at the water

Lobster, as briefed, with the boats in front of the window.
Afternoon

Boulders Beach

African penguins on the boardwalks at Simon’s Town. A colony of some two thousand birds, and for most of this group the only time they will stand a metre from a wild animal and have it ignore them. This is the colony.
Evening

Dinner

Thai, as briefed, back in the city.

Who is where

Guide	Throughout.
Driver	One. The peninsula loop is inside his hours.
Boat crew	Licensed operator at Hout Bay, life jackets for all.
Tour leader	With the group.

On the road	About 120 km as set out here
Weather-dependent	Chapman’s Peak, and the boat at Hout Bay
Accommodation	The Rockefeller, Cape Town — night five of five
Meals	Breakfast, lunch and dinner

Big Five & Two Oceans · Departure

Day Seven

A boxed breakfast, an early road, and the Atlantic behind them.

The thinking

A six o’clock departure for a flight at twenty to eleven looks early written down. It is right. The N2 at seven in the morning is not the N2 at six, and an airport queue is a poor last memory of a country.

Boxed breakfasts are set out in the lobby the night before, not handed over at the door in the dark. Room accounts are settled the previous evening so that nobody is standing at a reception desk at half past five with a credit card.

We stay with the group through check-in and as far past it as the airline allows. The handover is to the tour leader at the gate, not in the car park.

The day, hour by hour

05:30

Porters

Luggage down from the rooms, counted against the manifest, and loaded. Boxed breakfasts on board.
06:00

Departure

Thirty minutes to Cape Town International at this hour. Breakfast is eaten on the coach.
06:40

Check-in

Group check-in for SQ479. We stay until the last passenger is through and the count is right.
10:40

SQ479

Cape Town to Singapore. The group is the airline’s from here.
Afterwards

The report

A short written note back to you the same week — what ran, what did not, what we would change. Every departure, not only the difficult ones.

Who is where

Guide	To the check-in desk and past it.
Driver	One, from the hotel.
Porter team	From 05:30 at the Rockefeller.
Tour leader	Takes the group at the gate.

On the road	Hotel to airport, 30 min at that hour
Baggage	25 kg checked, as ticketed
Accommodation	—
Meals	Boxed breakfast

Sun City · North West

The Palaceof the Lost City

Three hundred and thirty-five rooms built around an invented legend, on the edge of an extinct volcano. This is the night this programme is sold on.

Every group tour to South Africa is remembered by one hotel. On this programme it is this one, and it is rightly put first.

The Palace opened in 1992 as the centrepiece of Sun City, built to a story its architects made up: the royal residence of a lost African civilisation, abandoned to the jungle and then uncovered. None of it is old. All of it is convincing — hand-carved ceilings, frescoed domes, mosaic floors, bronze cheetahs on the approach, and a man-made rainforest of a million and a half trees and plants planted around it.

It is a Leading Hotels of the World property with 335 rooms and suites, five restaurants, two pools of its own, and private access to the Valley of Waves. The Gary Player Country Club, which hosts the Nedbank Golf Challenge each November, is a few minutes away, and the Lost City course sits alongside the hotel.

For your passengers the appeal is simpler than any of that. It photographs like nowhere else they will see in eight days, and it is the picture that goes home.

The whole of it — towers, bridge and fountain — was built in 1992 to a story about a civilisation that never existed.

The rooms

Your group sits in the entry categories, twin share. The suites are listed because guests ask, and because a single supplement to a Junior Suite is an upsell worth having on the table.

Superior Room

The group room. Around forty square metres, marble vanity, and a sleeper couch in most of them. Looking either over the gardens or into the forest canopy.

Junior Suite

A separate sitting area and a larger terrace. The natural upgrade to offer a couple travelling on a twin-share rate.

Superior Suite

More space again, and the first category where the view is chosen rather than allocated.

King Suite

Maple panelling and a frescoed ceiling. This is the room the hotel photographs for its own brochure.

African Suite

A private jacuzzi and a piano. Rarely sold to a group, occasionally sold to a guest who has decided this is the trip.

The Royal Suite

The top of the house. Worth knowing it exists when a client asks what the best room in Sun City is.

This is the view from the rooms, and the reason one night is the wrong number.

What is on the property

Your group has one night here and an hour of it free. These are the things worth naming on the coach so they choose well.

Five restaurants

From the Crystal Court under the dome to poolside. Your dinner is included and taken here on arrival night.

Two pools, and the Valley of Waves

The hotel has its own pools; the Valley of Waves wave pool and slides sit a short walk away through the gardens.

The gardens

A million and a half plants over twenty-five hectares, with walkways, waterfalls and bird life. The best forty minutes a guest with a free hour can spend.

The Bridge of Time

The approach to the Lost City, with its hourly simulated tremor. Small, theatrical, and universally photographed.

The spa

Treatments and in-room massage. Not something a one-night group will use, but ask before you assume.

Two golf courses

The Gary Player Country Club, which hosts the Nedbank Golf Challenge, and the Lost City course beside the hotel with crocodiles at the thirteenth.

A million and a half trees and plants were put in around the building, and they have had thirty years to grow.

Where it sits

Sun City is built on the rim of an extinct volcano, and the game reserve is the crater beside it. Nothing about the evening drive involves a long transfer.

Pilanesberg, Bakubung Gate10 minutes
The Valley of WavesOn foot, through the gardens
Gary Player Country Club5 minutes
Pretoria2 hours
O.R. Tambo International2 hours 30

One night is not enough of it, and that is a commercial opportunity rather than a complaint. Your passengers arrive mid-afternoon, have roughly an hour, and are on a game vehicle before the light goes. Nobody swims. A second night here is the cheapest material improvement on the add-ons page and it buys a morning game drive as well — which is the drive that actually delivers the Big Five. This is the drive from the hotel, filmed on a Pilanesberg afternoon: a breeding herd walking their calves through the golden light.

The night the tour is sold on

It is the only five-star property on the programme and the only one your competitors cannot copy without paying for it. We would contract it as a series across all five departures rather than book it one at a time.

Visitors to Africa

Emperors Palace · Kempton Park

PeermontMetcourt

Three hundred and forty-eight rooms, five minutes from the aircraft, on the night before the Cape Town flight.

The least interesting night of the five, and the one that makes the following morning work.

Peermont’s Metcourt sits inside the Emperors Palace resort at 64 Jones Road, Kempton Park — five minutes from O.R. Tambo International, with a complimentary shuttle running every fifteen to twenty minutes.

It is a three-star hotel of 348 rooms, plainly furnished and properly run, inside a resort that carries a casino, theatres, a dozen restaurants, shopping and a day spa. It is not a destination and it does not pretend to be one. It is a comfortable bed on the night before an early flight.

Which is exactly why the location matters. Day four opens with a domestic flight to Cape Town. From Emperors Palace your group is at the terminal in ten minutes and nobody sets an alarm for five. A city-centre hotel on that same morning means three-quarters of an hour or more through the worst traffic in the country, and it has to start in the dark.

Five minutes from the terminal, and the reason day four starts at a civilised hour.

The rooms

Straightforward and consistent. Your group takes Classic or Superior rooms on twin share.

Classic Room

The group room. Simple, clean, air-conditioned, with everything a one-night stay needs and nothing it does not.

Superior Room

More space and a better outlook. The category to move a guest into if they complain, and the one to quote for a single supplement.

Family Rooms

Several tiers of them, which is useful for a family travelling together or for three passengers who would rather share.

Universal Accessible Room

Worth confirming at booking rather than on arrival, and worth asking your passengers about at the point of sale.

The Capri Suite

The junior suite. The only room here with any ceremony to it.

Plain, properly kept, and quiet. It is a bed before an early flight, and it is a good one.

What is on the property

The hotel is small. The resort around it is not — though on this programme the group arrives late from the boma and most of them will go straight up.

A complimentary airport shuttle

Every fifteen to twenty minutes, around the clock. This is the single most useful fact about the property.

21 Degrees

The cocktail bar. Where the group will end up after dinner.

F.L.A.G. café

All-day dining, and the room where breakfast is served before the flight.

A 24-hour gymnasium

Genuinely open around the clock, which matters on a night when half the group is still on Bangkok time.

Octavia’s Day Spa

Inside the resort, bookable by hotel guests.

The Emperors Palace resort

Casino, theatres, restaurants and shopping, all under cover and all a short walk from the room door.

Everything here is under cover and a short walk from the room door, which on a Johannesburg evening is the whole point.

Where it sits

Five minutes from the terminal, which is the whole reason it is here.

O.R. Tambo International5 minutes
Mall of Africa, Waterfall25 minutes
Pretoria40 minutes
Sun City2 hours 15

None

The night that makes the morning work

Nobody will remember this hotel and that is not a criticism of it. It is a good bed, a good breakfast and a ten-minute run to the terminal, and on the night before a domestic flight that is worth more than a view.

Visitors to Africa

Foreshore · Cape Town

TheRockefeller

Apartment-style rooms with a rooftop pool, ten minutes from Table Mountain and twenty-five on foot from the Waterfront. Three of your five nights.

Three of the five nights are spent here, which makes this the hotel your passengers will actually remember living in.

The Rockefeller by Newmark stands at 12 Christiaan Barnard Street in the Foreshore, the reclaimed land between the city centre and the harbour. Most of the rooms are apartments rather than hotel rooms — a kitchen, a separate living area, a washing machine in many of them. For a group on its fourth hotel in six days, that is worth more than another marble bathroom.

There is an indoor rooftop pool, a gymnasium open around the clock, a spa, a co-working floor, and three places to eat and drink including a sushi bar. Parking is secure and underground, which matters for a coach that needs to stand somewhere at six in the morning.

The Foreshore is a working business district. It is busy by day and quiet at night, and it is not the Waterfront. That is the one thing about this hotel your sales staff need to understand before they describe it.

Most of the rooms are apartments rather than hotel rooms, which matters on the fourth hotel in six days.

The rooms

Three broad categories. Your group takes hotel rooms or one-bedroom apartments on twin share.

Apartments

The reason to choose this hotel. A kitchen, a living area and a separate bedroom, at close to the price of a room.

Hotel Rooms

Conventional rooms for guests who would rather not have a kitchen. The standard group allocation.

The Residences

Larger apartments over more than one bedroom. Useful for a tour leader, or for a family who will not split across a twin and a single.

Gowns and slippers

Standard in the higher categories only. A small thing, and the sort of small thing a Thai group notices and mentions.

Twin configuration

Confirm at booking. Apartment stock is not always twin-bedded and a group of twenty needs it to be.

Better finished than the rate suggests, and the thing a guest comparing this with the Palace will notice first.

What is on the property

More than a three-star city hotel usually carries, and most of it is on the roof.

An indoor rooftop pool

Open eight in the morning until eight at night, and covered — which in Cape Town’s wind is the difference between a pool and a photograph of one.

A 24-hour gymnasium

Open around the clock. Useful on the first night, when the group is still on Bangkok time.

All-day dining

Breakfast from half past six, which is what makes the day seven departure possible without a boxed breakfast argument.

A sushi bar and cocktail bar

Open until eleven. Worth naming to a Thai group, who will otherwise go looking.

A spa and a co-working floor

Neither will be used by your passengers. Both are worth knowing about for the tour leader.

Secure underground parking

Where the coach stands, and where luggage is loaded out of the weather at half past five.

Sushi and cocktails until eleven. Worth naming to a Thai group, who will otherwise go looking.

Where it sits

Central, and central is not the same as convenient. These are the numbers that shape days four to seven.

Cape Town International Convention Centre10 minutes on foot
Table Mountain lower cableway15 minutes by coach
The V&A Waterfront8 minutes by coach, 25 on foot
Groot Constantia25 minutes
Cape Town International20 minutes

Day five needs a return transfer building in, and at the moment it has not got one. The programme drops the group at the Waterfront with the evening free. It is twenty-five to thirty minutes back to this hotel on foot, through a business district that empties after dark. Either the coach waits and makes two runs, or the guests are told at the point of sale that taxis are at their own cost. We would run the coach. It is an hour of a driver’s time and it removes the only genuine safety question on the programme.

Three nights, and the one they live in

It is the least expensive of the three hotels and the one that does the most work. In November it is also the line in the rate we would most want to pin down early.

Visitors to Africa

Big Five & Two Oceans · Go365 Travel

What it costs

Net to Go365, per person, twin or double share. In rand.

The thinking

Five departures in 2027 — April, July, August, October and November. One rate covers all five.

We could have given you five prices, because the beds genuinely do move between August and November. But a rate card your staff cannot hold in their heads is a rate card that gets quoted wrong, so we have taken the seasonal swing onto our own side and given you one number.

What does move is the size of the coach, because a coach, a driver and a guide cost the same whether twelve people are sitting behind them or thirty. That is handled with two supplements rather than a second rate card.

The rate now carries a Thai-speaking guide on every departure, as you asked. That is a real cost and it is a fixed one — the same whether eight travel or thirty — so it lands hardest on the small groups, which is why the supplements have moved rather than the structure. Against your published 2026 land-only price it leaves you a shade over twenty-three per cent at full size. Nine hundred rand on your 2027 retail puts you back at twenty-five, and a Thai speaker on the coach is the easiest nine hundred rand you will ever ask a passenger for.

December is set aside for now. It is a different conversation and we will come back to it.

The rate

Net to Go365, per person, twin or double share. April, July, August, October and November.

Group size	Net, per person	Approx. USD	Leaves you
Twenty and over	R26,900	$1,680	23%
Twelve to nineteen	R29,800	$1,860	15%
Eight to eleven	R33,350	$2,090	5%

The supplements below twenty are not a penalty, and they are not ours to absorb or yours. They are what a half-empty coach costs, and your brochure should carry them the way it already carries the single supplement — a small-group surcharge the passenger pays, not a margin you give up. Handled that way your margin holds at any size instead of thinning as the coach empties.

Below eight passengers this stops being a coach tour and we would quote it as a private journey instead. You will make more per head on it, not less.

Where the money goes

Accommodation is the largest single line in this rate and the only one that moves with the calendar. The same three hotels cost materially more in November than in August, and neither of us can do anything about that.

We have chosen to carry that swing rather than pass it to you. One rate across all five departures means your sales staff quote one number, your brochure carries one number, and nobody has to remember which month is which. The months where the beds are cheaper subsidise the months where they are not, and that is our problem rather than yours.

Everything else — the coach, the guide, the domestic flight, the entrances, the meals — barely moves across the year. What moves is where they sleep.

The five departures, and what each one actually is

The price is the same. The week is not. This is what we would tell your sales staff.

April

The most settled weather of the five, at both ends of the country. Autumn, harvest in the Winelands, warm days and cool evenings. The safest departure to sell to a first-time group. We cannot run the week before Easter or the week after it — the Palace and the Cape both fill with South African families and neither the rooms nor the rate survive it. Easter Sunday 2027 is 28 March, which blocks 21 March to 4 April, so an April departure wants to start from about the 12th.

July

The best game viewing of the year. The Pilanesberg is dry and cold, the grass is down and the animals are at the water, so one evening drive is far likelier to deliver. Cape Town is the trade-off: this is the wet season, and the cableway is the risk. Sell the safari, manage the mountain.

August

The same winter game viewing as July, and the month the whales are in. Southern right whales calve in Walker Bay from June, and by August they are close enough to the Hermanus cliffs to be watched from a bench. It is the one departure with a genuinely seasonal thing to sell, and the add-ons page carries it both ways — a day from Cape Town, or two nights on Walker Bay added after day seven. Same Cape Town weather caveat as July.

October

Probably the best of the five overall. Spring, good weather at both ends, the whales still in at Hermanus — the two-night Walker Bay extension works on this departure as well as August — and wildflowers on the West Coast — which sits directly beside the ostrich farm on day five and costs nothing to add. If you are only going to sell one of these hard, sell this one.

November

The best beach and city weather, and the most expensive beds — high season has begun and Cape Town knows it. The south-easter also starts, so the cableway risk comes back in a different form. A strong departure, and the one to contract earliest — November fills in Cape Town before anywhere else does.

What the rate includes

Accommodation	Five nights, twin or double share, at the three properties named above
Guiding	Registered national guide, arrival to departure
Thai-speaking guide	Included on every departure, all six days on the ground
Transport	Coach and professional driver throughout, plus the relief driver on day three
Domestic air	Johannesburg to Cape Town, 20 kg checked

Game viewing	Evening drive in open vehicles, Pilanesberg, with conservation fees
Entrances	Every entry named in the six days, including the cableway, Cape Point and Boulders
Meals	As briefed — breakfasts, five lunches, the boma, the dim sum and the Thai dinner
On the coach	Bottled water daily, porterage at every hotel

What it does not include

International flights	Yours, as now
Travel insurance	Covered by you, as agreed
Tips	The $36 to the guide and driver and the $24 to the tour leader stay as they are, collected by you
Day five dinner	The guests’ own at the Waterfront, as briefed
Anything on the add-ons page	Priced there

Terms we would want written down

Named properties	The rate is quoted against the three hotels above. Any substitution is re-quoted before it is sold.
Minimum numbers	Twelve to guarantee a departure. Eight to eleven runs at the rate above with its supplement.
Under eight	Not a series departure. Quoted as a private tour instead.
Release	Final numbers forty-five days before arrival.
Tour leader	One free land place per sixteen paying passengers. Below sixteen the leader travels at half rate.
Rate validity	The 2027 season, for the five departures named, subject to the Sun City series allocation being confirmed.
Easter 2027	Easter Sunday is 28 March 2027, so we cannot run 21 March to 4 April. An April departure wants to start from about the 12th. That fortnight is not negotiable — the Palace and the Cape both fill with South African families and neither the rooms nor the rate survive it.
Cancellation	Ours to match our suppliers’, which means a deposit at booking on the Palace and penalties from forty-five days. Your passenger terms refund in full at thirty days, and that fifteen-day gap needs closing one way or the other.
Exchange rate	The rate is contracted in rand. Your price is fixed in baht, so the gap between them moves with the exchange rate and neither of us controls it. We hold the rand rate as quoted; if the rand moves more than seven and a half per cent against the baht before a departure is paid, either of us may ask to re-quote it.
Payment	Deposit on confirmation, balance forty-five days before arrival.

These are working figures

They are built on today’s supplier pricing and our estimate of 2027’s. As each element is confirmed in writing — the Palace above all — some will settle higher and some lower, and we will tell you either way. Nothing here is a final quotation and nothing should be sold to a passenger until the numbers behind it are confirmed.

The margin shown against each band is measured on your published 2026 land-only price of ฿71,900, converted at ฿1 = R0.4882. Your 2027 price and the exchange rate on the day will both move it, so treat that column as an illustration rather than a promise — and send us your 2027 price when you have it.

The Thai-speaking guide is carried as a fixed cost per departure rather than a per-head one, because that is what it is. We have not loaded it with anything. If you would rather we dropped it back out and quoted it as an extra, say so and the rates return to where they were.

Rates are quoted in rand. The dollar figures are for reference only, converted at R15.98 and correct on the day this was written. If you would rather contract in dollars we will do that, and the rate will carry a band inside which we hold it.

The rate is quoted against the three hotels named above. If a property is substituted the rate is re-quoted, in either direction.

South African value added tax at fifteen per cent applies to land arrangements supplied to a foreign operator and is included in the rates above.

Sun City allocation is the first thing to settle. Five departures is around ninety room nights a year and we would contract it as a series rather than book it one departure at a time. With 2027 settled we can go to the resort now — send us the five dates and we will start.

Big Five & Two Oceans · Go365 Travel

Add-ons

What we would put in front of your passengers, before the tour and during it.

The thinking

Your passengers have flown eleven hours to get here and they will not do it again soon. The two or three days either side of the programme are worth more to them than anything that could be added inside it, and they are worth more to you as well.

There are three different things on this page and it is worth keeping them apart. Extensions are extra days at either end, sold to the individual passenger at booking and taken by the two or three on each departure who want them. Smaller things are bought by the individual guest during the week and taken in free time. Neither touches your programme: the eight days run exactly as they stand whether anybody takes one or not.

Added nights are the third and they are different in kind. They lengthen the week for the whole group, every passenger takes them, and they move the tour price — so they are your decision rather than the guest’s. There are only two of them and they are at the foot of the page.

Four of them have pages of their own. Sanbona is the extension we would put in front of you before any of the others, Victoria Falls is the one your passengers are most likely to say yes to, Hermanus is the one we can promise personally, and Jaci’s at Madikwe is the one for a guest who wants a real safari without a malaria tablet. All four are worth reading before you quote them.

Every figure here is indicative and none of it is contracted yet. Tell us which ones interest you and we will price those properly.

Extensions — extra days at either end

These are sold to the guest, not to the coach. Nothing here changes the eight days you have published — all four are days added before the group arrives or after it leaves, taken by the two or three passengers on each departure who have flown eleven hours and do not want the week to end at an airport. The week runs exactly as it stands whether anybody takes one or not. All four have a page of their own.

	What it is	From, per person
Sanbona, the Little Karoo — two nights	Fifty-four thousand hectares of malaria-free Big Five country three hours from Cape Town, and the only free-roaming pride of white lions in the world. This is the safari the programme implies and one evening drive at Pilanesberg cannot deliver. The reserve.	R21,650
Hermanus and Walker Bay — two nights	Two hours from Cape Town, and between August and October the best land-based whale watching in the world. This one is personal: John Sparks lives in Hermanus and his family have been on this coast for sixty years — his father before him and his son after him. Southern right whales calve in Walker Bay and come close enough to the cliff path to be watched from a bench, without a boat and without a fee. We add a permitted boat on the middle day, which is what turns a good morning into the thing they film. Two nights on the seafront, the cliff path, the boat, and Hemel-en-Aarde’s wine estates on the way back. August and October departures only.	R8,400
Victoria Falls — two nights	Flown from Johannesburg. Two hotels at the same price and the guest picks: Ilala Lodge, close enough to walk to the falls and hear them from the garden, or Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, on a ridge above a waterhole where the elephant come down to drink at sundown. The rainforest walk along the rim, a sunset cruise on the Zambezi, and the option of the flight over. The single strongest extension in this part of the world for an Asian group. The airfare is most of this figure — a third night adds only about R1,700 and is much the better value, so we would quote both. The falls.	R13,900
Jaci’s, Madikwe — two nights	Seventy-five thousand hectares of Big Five country on the Botswana border, four hours north of Johannesburg and entirely malaria-free. Four game drives, off-road with a tracker, night drives, and one of the best places on earth for wild dog. No day visitors are allowed in at all. Taken at the front of the week. The reserve.	R17,500

Hermanus comes two ways. Two nights on Walker Bay for the guest who wants the cliff path at first light and again at dusk, when the whales are closest — or a single day out for the guest who only wants to see them once. Both are additions, and a passenger can take either without anything else moving. The whale coast.

One date to watch in October. The Hermanus Whale Festival takes the town over for a weekend at the end of September or the start of October. The whales are at their best and so are the crowds — beds treble and the cliff path is shoulder to shoulder. Tell us your October dates early and we will either book into it deliberately or step around it.

Smaller things, sold on the coach

Bought by the individual guest during the week and taken in free time, where the take rate is highest because they are already here and already enjoying it. None of them displaces anything in the programme.

	What it is	From, per person
Morning game drive, Pilanesberg	The evening drive is one roll of the dice. The morning drive is when the cats are still out, and it is the cheapest way to improve the whole week. It needs the second night at Sun City, below.	R950
The Cape Winelands, a full day	Stellenbosch and Franschhoek properly, two estates and lunch, back to the hotel the same evening. No night added.	R1,900
Hermanus and the whales, a full day	A day out to Walker Bay with a permitted boat among southern right whales. They calve here from June and are at their closest from August to October. Land-based viewing from the cliff path is among the best in the world and costs nothing; the boat is what makes it a day they talk about. August and October only, and there is a two-night version of it above.	R3,200
Robben Island	Half a day from the Waterfront, booked well ahead. Sea conditions cancel it and the tickets are not refundable, which the guest must be told at the point of sale.	R850
Two Oceans by helicopter	Twenty-five minutes over the peninsula, six to a machine. Expensive, and the thing guests film and send home. This is the flight — our own footage, and the easiest way to sell it to a passenger who is hesitating over the price.	R4,200

We would not sell all five. Two offered well beat five offered badly. The morning game drive is the one we would put first on every departure, and on an August or October departure the whale day is the second.

Added nights, for the whole group

A different decision from everything above, and yours rather than the guest’s. These lengthen the published week by a night and every passenger takes them, so they move the tour price. They are the two we would look at hardest before 2027 goes to print.

	What it is	Per person, added to the tour
A second night at Sun City	Sun City is the hook of the whole programme and one night is not enough of it. They arrive mid-afternoon, have about an hour, and are on a game vehicle before the light goes. Nobody swims, nobody sees the Valley of the Waves, and nobody uses the hotel they have just been sold. The second night fixes that and unlocks the morning game drive above — the drive that actually delivers the Big Five.	R2,600
A night in the Winelands	Stellenbosch or Franschhoek, two estates and a long lunch, and a night out of the city before Cape Town. It was in the SQ004 departure and has been missed since. If a whole night is too much, the full day above does most of the work for R1,900 and changes nothing.	R3,400

If you take one thing off this page, take the second night at Sun City. R2,600 on the tour price turns the weakest afternoon of the week into a proper stay, and with the R950 morning drive behind it you have the difference between a group who visited a game reserve and a group who saw the Big Five. On a nine-day programme it is also the easiest thing in the world to justify against a competitor still selling eight.

Either can be built in or offered. Built into the published programme they raise the price of the week and improve it by more than they cost. Offered as an upgrade at the point of sale they convert while the guest is still choosing between you and somebody else. Both work — what does not work is finding out on the first departure that one afternoon at Sun City was not enough.

Where this leaves you

On a coach of twenty-five, a morning game drive taken by half the group and a Winelands day taken by a third is a few thousand rand of margin on each departure for perhaps an hour of the tour leader’s attention. An extension taken by six passengers is worth considerably more than that, and it is sold at booking rather than on the road.

The two added nights sit in a different column of the same ledger. They cost every passenger rather than a few, so they show up in the headline price — but they are also the only things on this page that improve the week for the whole group rather than for whoever happened to buy one. Of the two, the second night at Sun City is the one we would argue for.

These are working figures and none of them is contracted. Tell us which you want and we will price them for real.

An extension · The Little Karoo

Sanbona

Fifty-four thousand hectares of private wilderness, three hours from Cape Town, with no town, no road and no farm light within sight of it.

This is the answer to the one weakness in the programme. Your passengers get a single evening game drive at Pilanesberg and a captive collection the following morning. Two nights here is the version they thought they were buying.

Most safaris in South Africa are five hours away by air. This one is three hours by road from Cape Town, and it does not feel like a compromise. Sanbona lies on Route 62 between Montagu and Barrydale, at the foot of the Warmwaterberg, in country almost no visitor troubles to stop in. Red earth, thorn trees, folded mountains and enormous space.

It is one of the largest privately owned reserves in the country and, being arid, it is the opposite of the lowveld: open, pale and wide, with animals visible at distance rather than glimpsed through bush.

It is also malaria-free, which matters more than people expect — on a journey with children, with older travellers, or with anyone who would rather not take tablets for three weeks.

The only free-roaming pride of white lions in the world — wild, across fifty-four thousand hectares, and the single thing on this proposal nobody else can offer you.

Three lodges, and a walking camp

Each stands apart from the others, far enough that a party at one never sees a party at another. For a group of your size we would take one lodge whole.

Dwyka Tented Lodge

Nine tents under canvas in the bend of a dry ravine, concealed by rock formations, each with a private deck and plunge pool. The most atmospheric of the three, and the one that feels furthest from anywhere.

Tilney Manor

A Cape Georgian homestead of 1898, restored, with six open-plan suites around a courtyard and a rim-flow pool looking over the plains. Gardens, shade and a porch, in the middle of a desert.

Gondwana Family Lodge

A thatched Karoo homestead above the Bellair Dam, with twelve suites and a programme for children. Where a group travelling with families goes, and the one that takes your numbers most easily.

Explorer Camp

For those who would rather walk than drive. A guided walking safari, on foot, in Big Five country. Not for everyone on a coach, and unforgettable for the few who take it.

What is actually here

The Big Five are all present, but the arid country and the sheer size of the reserve mean sightings are earned rather than guaranteed. That is the honest position, and it is also the point: nothing here is arranged for anybody.

The white lions

Sanbona is home to the only free-roaming pride of white lions in the world. Not an enclosure and not a project — a pride living wild across fifty-four thousand hectares.

Cheetah in open country

Country flat enough and clear enough that a cheetah can be watched running, which is rare almost everywhere else.

San rock art

Seven recorded sites on the reserve, some of the paintings more than three thousand years old, made by people who lived in this valley long before any boundary was drawn around it.

The riverine rabbit

One of the most endangered mammals on earth, and it lives here. Most visitors will never see one. Knowing it is out there is part of the place.

A sky with nothing in it

On a moonless night the Milky Way comes down to the horizon on every side. We bring an astronomer out with his own instruments.

Malaria-free

No tablets, no precautions, no conversation about it at all.

This is the argument that sells it. Day three takes the group to see white lions and white tigers behind fences, and we describe that honestly on the day page. Here the white lions are wild, across an area the size of a small country. Put the two side by side and the extension sells itself.

On a moonless night it comes down to the horizon on every side. We bring an astronomer out with his own instruments.

How we would use it

Two nights, private vehicles, and our own pace.

A dawn drive with breakfast laid out in the veld. The long heat of the middle of the day given over to the pool and the shade. Then out again as the light turns, with a table set on open ground for sundowners.

Dinner in the boma, and afterwards the sky. Sutherland, an hour or two north, has the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere but does not admit visitors at night. So we bring the astronomer here instead, which is better: no queue, no visitor centre, and nobody else’s children asking questions.

Private vehicles are taken for the party so that nobody shares a drive with strangers, and so that the morning belongs to whatever your guests want to follow.

Cape Town, by road over the Tradouw Pass3 hours
Hermanus, by helicopter40 minutes
Game drivesTwo a day, private vehicles
MalariaNone. No tablets.
BoardFull, and all drives included

We would take them over the Tradouw Pass rather than the inland road. The land changes completely at the top, and everyone in the vehicle goes quiet. It costs nothing and it is the best half hour of the transfer.

What two nights cost

Net to Go365, per person sharing, for the two nights after day six. Full board, two game drives a day in private vehicles, the astronomer, and the road either way from Cape Town.

Low season — July and August

Group size	Net, per person	Approx. USD
Twelve	R20,100	$1,260
Sixteen	R18,550	$1,160
Twenty	R18,200	$1,140
Twenty-five	R17,350	$1,090

Standard — April, October, November

Group size	Net, per person	Approx. USD
Twelve	R23,550	$1,470
Sixteen	R22,000	$1,380
Twenty	R21,650	$1,350
Twenty-five	R20,800	$1,300

Dwyka is the premium lodge of the three and carries a supplement. The rates above are built on Gondwana or Tilney, which take your numbers more easily and are the right answer for a coach group.

These are working figures. The reserve is not contracted to us yet and its rates move with the season; nothing here should be sold to a passenger until we have it in writing.

Two things to settle before this is sold

Where it sits in the week. The cleanest version runs it after day six: the group leaves Cape Town on the morning of day seven instead of flying, two nights at Sanbona, and back to Cape Town on day nine for the flight home. That is two extra days on the ground, not two extra nights.

They will not fly home with the group. Anyone taking it needs a deviation on the Singapore Airlines ticket, or a separate onward booking. That is your side of the arrangement and it is the thing most likely to stop this working, so settle it with the airline before you put the extension in front of anybody.

The safari the programme implies

One evening drive at Pilanesberg is a coin toss. This is two days of Big Five country the size of a small nation, malaria-free, three hours from the city your group is already standing in. Tell us which departures you would like it held for and we will approach the reserve.

Visitors to Africa

Big Five & Two Oceans · Bangkok, and the night flight

Day One

The one day of the eight we are not there. Your tour leader has the group, and we are waiting at the other end.

The thinking

This page is here because a day nobody handles is the day things go wrong. Your tour leader takes the group from Suvarnabhumi and we take them in the arrivals hall at O.R. Tambo eleven hours later — and everything that makes that handover work happens today, or it does not happen at all.

So there is no programme on this page. There is a running order, and a short list of what we need in our hands before the aircraft doors close.

It is also the day the week is set. They board in a Bangkok afternoon and land in a Johannesburg winter morning having slept badly in a seat. The first thing they see is our guide. We would rather that were a cold towel and a working local SIM than a man holding a clipboard.

The day, hour by hour

Afternoon

Suvarnabhumi, Singapore Airlines check-in

Your tour leader meets the group in the departures hall three hours before the flight. Bags are checked through to Johannesburg on one ticket, so nobody collects a suitcase in Singapore.
Late afternoon

Bangkok to Singapore

Two hours and twenty minutes to Changi. A short sector, and the one where the group gets to know its tour leader.
Evening

The connection at Changi

Airside, no immigration and no visa for a Thai passport in transit. Long enough to eat properly, which is worth saying to the group, because the next meal comes at altitude.
Late evening

Singapore to Johannesburg

Ten and a half hours over the Indian Ocean, overnight. The clocks go back five hours while they sleep.
Overnight

What we are doing

The flight is tracked from our side. If it moves, the guide, the driver and the reserve at Sun City know before the group does, and the Palace is told what time to expect lunch.
06:10 tomorrow

The handover

Our guide is in the arrivals hall at O.R. Tambo before the aircraft is on stand. That is where your day two begins and where this page ends.

Eleven hours and a bad night’s sleep. Everything on day two is paced around that.

Who is where

Tour leader	Yours, with the group from the departures hall in Bangkok to the aircraft door in Johannesburg.
Go365	Has the group for the whole of today. Nothing on this day is ours.
Visitors to Africa	Tracking the flight, and holding the arrivals hall from half past five tomorrow morning.
Guide and driver	Johannesburg, on standby. Not with the group until 06:10 tomorrow.

Carrier	Singapore Airlines throughout, on one ticket, bags checked through
In the air	About thirteen hours’ flying, plus the Changi connection
Checked baggage	25 or 30 kg depending on the fare class — tell us which you have contracted
Time difference	Johannesburg is five hours behind Bangkok
Visas	Not required for a Thai passport entering South Africa
Accommodation	In the air

What we need before the doors close. The final rooming list with names exactly as they appear in the passport, any dietary requirements, anyone who cannot manage stairs or a long walk, and the tour leader’s mobile number reachable on arrival. We ask for all of it forty-five days out and confirm it again seventy-two hours before departure. A name that does not match a passport is a problem at a hotel desk at three in the afternoon with a game drive waiting.

Say the twenty-kilogram rule today, not on day four. They fly in on an international allowance of twenty-five or thirty kilograms and will pack to it. The Johannesburg–Cape Town sector on day four is twenty kilograms checked, and the excess is paid at the counter by the guest. Put it in the joining instructions and it costs nobody anything; leave it and it is a queue and a sour mood at the domestic terminal.

If the Changi connection goes. Singapore Airlines rebooks onto the next Johannesburg service and the group arrives a day late, which costs the Palace night and the Pilanesberg drive. We would rather know at Changi than at O.R. Tambo: one message from your tour leader to our number and we start moving the hotels while they are still in the terminal. That number goes on the tour leader’s documents, not in an email.

Two things to confirm for the brochure. The Bangkok–Singapore and Singapore–Johannesburg flight numbers and times, which we have deliberately left off this page until you send them. And the visa position, which is currently visa-free for Thai passport holders but is the sort of rule that changes without much notice — we would check it before each departure rather than once.

Extra days · Walker Bay

Hermanus

Two nights on the cliff, two hours from Cape Town, in the best land-based whale watching in the world. This is where John Sparks lives.

Every extension on this list is good. This one is ours. John Sparks lives in Hermanus and his family have been on this coast for sixty years — his father before him, his son after him, three generations on the same sand.

Which means the guests who take these two nights are not handed to a local operator and collected afterwards. They are shown the town by the person who walks that cliff path at five in the morning because he wants to, and who has written a book about it.

It is sold to the passenger, not to the coach. Two nights added before the group arrives or after it leaves, taken by whoever wants them. Nothing about the eight days moves.

Between June and November the southern right whales are in Walker Bay. They come up from the Southern Ocean around Antarctica to calve and to breed in warm shallow water, and a third of the world’s population uses a handful of bays like this one. They are loyal to their maps — the same whales come back to the same curve of coast, year after year.

“Hermanus calls itself the world’s whale-watching capital. On days like this, that’s not marketing. It’s geography.” — September Tides, chapter one

Why this is different from a boat trip

Almost everywhere else in the world, seeing a whale means paying for a boat and going out to find one. Here they come to you, and they come close.

Photographs undersell this one, so it is worth two minutes of anybody’s time to see it move. Walker Bay from the air →

Twenty at once, from a bench

On a still September morning you can count twenty southern rights across the bay with the naked eye. No boat, no ticket, no queue. The bay opens in front of the town like an amphitheatre and the whales are already at work in it.

The blow comes first

Two blowholes, two plumes, a sharp-edged V of breath that hangs and dissolves. Then the backs, black and enormous, rolling up and over in slow arcs. Then a tail, dark and wide, water streaming off it before it goes down with the weight of a closing door.

They are here for months

June to November, with the best of it from August to October. This is not a sighting you hope for on one afternoon. It is the weather of the place for half the year.

The other half of the conversation

A permitted boat takes them out among the same animals. From the water they can see the cliff path they walked at dawn, and the town clinging to the edge of it like barnacles.

Nobody has to be anywhere

There is no schedule to keep. Guests who want to sit on a terrace and watch the bay all morning are doing it correctly.

It costs nothing

The cliff path is free and open, and it is the best of it. Everything else here is an addition rather than a necessity.

And when the whales are out

Walker Bay is not empty for the other half of the year. The seal colony, the dolphins, the sharks and a great deal of birdlife are there in every month, and the boat goes out for them just the same.

This is the town from the boat, at the end of a morning on the water. In ‘September Tides’ he puts it better than we can: from the sea, the houses cling to the edge like barnacles.

Not a walk along the sand — out into the waves on a horse with no saddle, with a groom at each shoulder. Nobody needs to know how to ride.

Where they sleep

The Windsor Hotel, on Marine Drive, standing on the cliff above Walker Bay with the water directly below the windows.

The Windsor Hotel

Built in 1896 — not as a hotel, but as a sanatorium, because people came to Hermanus for what they called its champagne air. Jan Smuts was a regular visitor; the doctor who commissioned it had married his sister. It became the Windsor in 1931, named after the liner its owner had just sailed home on, and it has been restored twice since.

Ask for a sea-facing room

This is the one instruction that matters. The sea-facing rooms look straight out over the bay, and in season guests watch whales from the bed before they have got up. A mountain-facing room at the same hotel is a different holiday, and it costs very little to avoid.

Simple rooms, remarkable position

The bedrooms are clean and unfussy rather than designed, and nobody stays here for the interiors. The character is downstairs — old beams, a fire, a piano, and a photograph on the staircase of people watching a whale from the rocks below the hotel. What you are buying is the cliff, the bay, and the path past the door.

Why not somewhere newer

There are smarter hotels on this coast and several of them are further away. The Windsor is on the cliff in the middle of the town, the path runs past the door, and the village is five minutes on foot. For two nights that is worth more than a spa.

The hotel stands on the cliff with the road and then the water. In season the whales are in that frame.

The same hotel, two different holidays

Left, a mountain-facing room. Right, a sea-facing one. Same building, same rate card, a few hundred rand between them.

This is the only instruction on this page that really matters, and it is why we have put the two pictures next to each other. The mountain rooms are perfectly nice and they look at a church spire. The sea rooms have Walker Bay filling the window from the bed, and in season the whales are in that water. A guest who came to Hermanus for the whales and was given the other side will not complain to us — they will simply come home and tell twenty people the trip was fine.

Old beams, a piano, whale paintings and a fire in the evening. The public rooms at the Windsor are where its hundred and thirty years actually show.

On the staircase there is a photograph the length of the wall: a line of people standing on the rocks below the town, watching a southern right roll over in the shallows a few metres away. It was taken here, and it is the most honest advertisement the hotel has.

Twelve kilometres of it, running the length of the town above the water. The whales come in against these rocks, which is why the benches face the sea and not the view.

What the two days hold

None of it is compulsory and all of it is on the doorstep. This is a list to choose from on the morning, not a programme.

The cliff path at first light

Twelve kilometres of it, running the length of the town above the water through fynbos and milkwood. Engineered enough that an eighty-nine-year-old can walk sections of it, wild enough that every footfall still feels like a small trespass. First light comes down the Kleinrivier mountains like honey and the bay turns from pewter to pearl.

The boat — and there is always something

A permitted operator out of the New Harbour, four hours on the water. In season the whales, but never only the whales: Cape fur seals in their thousands on Geyser Rock, dolphins that come to ride the bow, sharks in the channel between the islands, and seabirds everywhere — gannets, cormorants, penguins on Dyer Island, oystercatchers on the rocks. Nobody has ever come back from that boat having seen nothing.

Hemel en Aarde, and the wine

Heaven and Earth, the valley behind the town. Cold air comes up off Walker Bay and makes pinot noir and chardonnay that compete with Burgundy — Hamilton Russell, Bouchard Finlayson, Newton Johnson, Ataraxia, Creation. A morning of tastings at two or three estates and a long lunch above the vines, twenty minutes from the hotel door.

Or walk into it

Most visitors drive in. For anyone who would rather earn it, we go up the mountain from Fernkloof past the waterfall and the Adder Ladder, over the top, and come down into the vineyards from above. The vehicle meets them at the first estate and the tasting is the reward.

Horses in the surf

Twenty-five minutes along the coast at Pearly Beach. Bareback, in the open ocean, with a handler either side of anyone who has never sat on a horse. It is the single most exhilarating hour on this coast and almost nobody offers it.

Sopiesklip

A stretch of shoreline no road reaches, which John’s family have been coming to for sixty years. Cold wine, something to eat, the Atlantic in front and the mountains going pink behind. No schedule, and nobody else on it. There is a short film of it here.

The village

Galleries, craftwork and small shops worth an hour or two, and restaurants better than a town this size has any right to. Five minutes from the hotel door.

Looking back down over the town, the lagoon and Grotto beach from the path above Fernkloof. The whole of Walker Bay opens up behind you as you climb, and the valley is over the top.

An estate in the valley — the dam, the vines and the mountain behind. Two or three of these in a morning, and a long lunch above the vineyards.

Heaven and Earth. The estates put on long evenings by the water through the season, and twenty minutes later your guests are back on the cliff.

The hour before the day starts

From September Tides by John Sparks — chapter eleven, “The Light Between Worlds”.

He opens that chapter with a line worth putting in front of a guest: between night and day there is a narrow hour when the world forgets to pretend — when whales rise, cliffs breathe, and the ocean tells the truth to anyone awake enough to listen.

He walks it from the New Harbour while the dark is still going out towards Madagascar, eighteen hundred miles east. Walker Bay lies like brushed pewter, so still it looks poured rather than blown into shape. The first light touches the peaks before it touches anything else, turning them from charcoal to copper, and then spills down the slopes until it finds the water. Then the bay gives in, and what was pewter becomes pearl.

Four chapters of that book are set on this bay. One is the whales, one is the walk over the mountain into Hemel en Aarde, one is the horses at Pearly Beach, and one is the day on the water. They are on the website and they are short.

Worth sending to a passenger who is undecided. Nobody has ever booked two nights somewhere because of a bullet point. A guest who reads three pages of a man describing his own coast at five in the morning books it that afternoon.

What two nights cost

Net to Go365, per person sharing. Return transfers from Cape Town, two nights at the Windsor in a sea-facing room with breakfast, a guided morning on the cliff path, and the Hemel en Aarde estates on the way back.

	Net, per person	Approx. USD
Two nights, sea-facing at the Windsor	R8,400	$530
A third night	R2,100	$130
The boat, per person	R1,450	$90
Horses in the surf, per person	R1,900	$120
Hemel en Aarde wine day, per person	R1,950	$120
The walk over the mountain into the valley, per person	R950	$60

There is no airfare in this one, which is why it is the cheapest extension on the list and the easiest yes. Two hours by road from Cape Town, and the drive over Sir Lowry’s Pass and along the coast at Clarence Drive is one of the great roads in the country rather than the price of getting somewhere.

These are working figures. Nothing is contracted and nothing should be sold to a passenger until it is confirmed in writing.

Two things to settle before this is sold

The whales are seasonal. The sea is not. June to November is when the southern rights are in Walker Bay, which covers your July, August, October and November departures and makes this page true word for word. April is outside that window — but the boat still runs, and the seals, the dolphins, the sharks and the birds are there all year. An April guest should be sold the marine day and the wine and the cliff path, and told plainly there will be no whales. Sold that way it is still a good two nights. Sold as a whale trip in April it is a complaint.

The Whale Festival takes the town over for a weekend. Usually the end of September or the start of October. The whales are at their best and so are the crowds — beds treble and the cliff path is shoulder to shoulder. Tell us the dates early and we will either book into it deliberately or step around it.

Sopiesklip

The one place on this page you will not find on anybody else’s programme.

No road reaches it. Three generations of the same family have been coming to this stretch of sand for sixty years — John’s father, now ninety, then John, then his son. Cold wine, something to eat, the Atlantic in front and the mountains going pink behind, and nobody else on it.

It is not a product and it is not on any list. It is where we take the guests we have enjoyed, on the afternoon it suits, and it is the single thing on this whole proposal a competitor cannot price against.

An hour from the hotel and not another person on it. The mountains at the back of the picture are the ones that stand behind Hermanus itself — the same range the guests will have looked up at from the cliff path that morning.

What is actually down there

White dune above weathered rock, and a ledge over the surf that the family have been climbing onto since John was a boy.

There is no lodge, no sign, no gate and no booking. We bring what is needed, we walk in, and we go home when the light does. Of everything a guest does on these two nights, this is usually the afternoon they talk about when they get home.

Watch the short film →

The one extension we can promise personally

Everything else on the list we would arrange well. This one we would arrange ourselves, on ground we have walked every week for most of a lifetime. Tell us which departures to hold it against.

Visitors to Africa

Extra days · Madikwe

Jaci’sMadikwe

Seventy-five thousand hectares of Big Five country on the Botswana border, four game drives, and not a single malaria tablet.

This is the safari extension we would put in front of a guest before any other, and it is the one that answers the question everybody else has to dodge: what about malaria?

Madikwe runs along the Botswana border in the far north of the North West province — seventy-five thousand hectares of Big Five country, entirely malaria-free, with no day visitors allowed through the gate at all. It is one of the largest reserves in the country and one of the least crowded, because it is far enough from everywhere that the coaches do not come.

Jaci’s is the lodge we would send them to. Tented suites and a tree lodge up in the canopy, a waterhole in front of the deck and a photographic hide dug in beside it at eye level with whatever comes down to drink.

It is sold to the passenger rather than built into the week: two nights added before the group assembles or after it leaves. Nothing in the eight days moves.

Why this is the one

Ask John where he would go himself and there is no pause: Jaci’s, hands down, no question. It has been his answer for years, and we would rather tell you that than pretend we are neutral.

He has built a safari lodge himself, from the ground up, so he walks into these places looking at the wrong things — the staff turnover, the state of the vehicles, whether the guide talks to the tracker or over him. Jaci’s comes through all of it. The people have been there years rather than seasons, which is the single most reliable indication that a lodge is properly run, and it shows in the way guests are handled from the moment the vehicle stops.

It also looks like nowhere else. Most of this industry does khaki canvas and a kudu skull over the fireplace. Jaci’s does colour — ochre and stone and glass, light coming in from three sides, rooms that a guest walks into and stops in the doorway. For a Thai passenger who has seen a hundred safari photographs that all look the same, this is the one that does not.

And then there is the hide. It is dug in beside the waterhole, below ground, so a guest sits at the eye level of an elephant drinking six metres away with nothing between them but air. Guests who said they would rest through the heat of the day end up in there for four hours. It is the thing they photograph and it is the thing they describe at dinner.

From the last time he was there →

And to say it plainly. We are not recommending Jaci’s because a rate came back well. We are recommending it because it is where we would take our own family, and we would rather stand behind one lodge we know than hand you a list of six we have only read about. The film above is his own, from his last stay — not a brochure reel.

Nobody is asked whether they would like anything. It simply arrives, on the deck, at the hour it should. That is the part of a lodge you cannot buy with money and it is the part that takes years of the same people to build.

Fewer than seven thousand of these left in the wild, and Madikwe is one of the few reserves where a guest can reasonably expect to find them. A pack on the move, in daylight, at this distance, is not something the Kruger will hand you.

What two nights actually means

Four drives, which is the number that matters. Everything else on the property is comfort.

Day one — the afternoon drive

In the vehicle after breakfast, at the lodge for a late lunch, and out on the first drive by four. That drive runs into the dark with a spotlight, which is when the cats begin to move and when the national park has already closed its gates.

Day two — two drives and the middle of the day

Out before first light with coffee, back for a late breakfast, the heat of the day free, and out again at four. Most of what they came to see happens on one of those two.

Day three — the last morning

One more drive, breakfast, and the road south. They are back in Johannesburg by mid-afternoon.

Four drives, not two

Worth saying plainly to a passenger: a single evening drive is one roll of the dice. Four is a different proposition entirely, and it is the reason a two-night safari works and a one-night safari does not.

Open vehicle, three tiered rows, nine or ten guests, and a tracker on the bonnet reading the sand. Nobody sits behind glass and everybody has an outside seat.

What Madikwe gives you that the Kruger cannot

The Kruger is the famous one. For your passengers, this is the better answer, and these are the reasons.

No malaria, no tablets, no conversation

The single biggest reason to send them here. Madikwe is malaria-free, which removes the one objection that stops families, older travellers and anybody nervous about prophylaxis from booking a safari at all.

Off-road, with a tracker on the bonnet

A private reserve, so when something is found the vehicle goes to it. A second man sits out front reading the sand, and guests watch him work as much as they watch the animals.

Open vehicles

No glass, no roof, three tiered rows, nine or ten guests. Everybody has the outside seat.

Night drives

After sunset with a spotlight, which the national park does not permit at all. Leopard, brown hyena, civet, genet, and the occasional lion kill.

Wild dog

Fewer than seven thousand left in the wild, and Madikwe is one of the handful of places you can reasonably expect to find them. For a guest who has already done a safari somewhere, this is the animal that makes the trip.

Nobody else

No day visitors are allowed into Madikwe at all. Seventy-five thousand hectares and a handful of lodges, so a sighting is your vehicle and perhaps one other — never the nine cars of a Kruger roadside.

Everything included

Full board, all drives, drinks on the vehicle at sunset and a drink in your hand when you get back. Nobody signs anything until they leave.

This is the eye line from inside it — level with the water, close enough to hear them. Not one of those animals knows anybody is there, and that is the difference between watching game and being among it.

Where they actually sleep

Thatch, canvas and glass out over the bush, a deck of their own, and a bath that looks at trees rather than a wall.

Every suite has its own deck, and the decks are the point. They are lit with paraffin lanterns rather than floodlights, they look straight into the treeline, and they are private enough that a couple can sit out in a dressing gown at six in the morning with coffee and not see another guest. The rooms are air-conditioned, the beds are proper beds, and the bathrooms would not embarrass a city hotel — but nobody remembers the bathroom. They remember the deck.

Back from the drive, down onto the main deck, and the sun going through the trees behind the camp. This is the hour before dinner, and it is the one most guests say they did not expect to enjoy as much as they did.

A sleep-out deck in the bush with one bed on it, a canopy that rolls back, and nothing overhead but the southern sky. A guide takes you out after dinner and collects you with coffee at first light. For a guest on a honeymoon or an anniversary there is nothing else on this proposal that comes close.

The night under the sky

One bed, one deck, no walls, and a radio.

The Starbed is the upgrade to put in front of the right passenger and to keep away from the wrong one. It is a separate deck out in the reserve, made up properly, with a guide dropping you after dinner and fetching you at dawn. There is a radio and there is a roof that pulls over if the weather turns, and that is the whole of it.

Sell it to a couple. Do not sell it to somebody nervous, and do not sell it to a family with small children. It goes to one party a night, it is weather-dependent, and it must be booked at the same time as the room rather than asked for on arrival.

One to price when we have your dates. We have not put a figure on the Starbed here because it moves with the season and there is only one of it. Tell us which departures you want to hold and we will come back with the supplement in writing, along with the Tree Lodge rate.

Madikwe or Sanbona

Your passengers will ask, and your staff need a straight answer rather than a preference. These are the real differences.

Getting thereMadikwe is four to five hours by road from Johannesburg, or an hour by light aircraft. Sanbona is three hours from Cape Town.
Which end of the weekMadikwe goes at the front, before the group assembles in Johannesburg. Sanbona goes at the back, after Cape Town.
MalariaNeither. Both are malaria-free, which is why these are the two we sell.
The gameMadikwe is Big Five with wild dog, in bushveld. Sanbona is arid and open, with the only free-roaming white lions in the world.
CostSimilar. Madikwe by road is the cheaper of the two; flying evens it up.

How we would steer it by the question the guest actually asks. “I want to see a proper safari before the tour starts” — Madikwe, at the front. “I do not want the week to end at an airport” — Sanbona, at the back. “I have done safari before” — Madikwe, for the wild dog. “I want the thing nobody else has” — Sanbona, for the white lions. A guest with the time and the money should take both, and they will not be the same two nights.

What two nights cost

Net to Go365, per person sharing. Road transfers from Johannesburg, two nights at Jaci’s on full board with all game drives, conservation levies and drinks on the vehicle.

	Net, per person	Approx. USD
Two nights at Jaci’s, driven from Johannesburg	R17,500	$1,100
Flown instead, by light aircraft	R6,000	$380
A third night	R6,500	$410
The Tree Lodge, per night	R900	$60

This figure has gone up since our first note to you. The R9,800 we put on the add-ons page early on was a lodge on a park boundary rather than a private reserve inside one, and it would not have delivered the off-road, the tracker or the night drives described here. We would rather correct it now than have a guest pay for one thing and be sold another.

The road transfer is four to five hours each way through the platinum country north of Sun City. It is a real half-day, and for a guest who has just flown eleven hours we would fly them instead — an hour by light aircraft from O.R. Tambo, with a twenty-kilogram soft-bag allowance.

These are working figures. Nothing is contracted and nothing should be sold to a passenger until it is confirmed in writing.

Three things to settle before this is sold

Sell the malaria-free part hard. Every competitor offering a safari before or after this tour will be offering the Kruger, and every one of them has to mention prophylaxis. You do not. For a Thai family travelling with a grandparent or a child, that single sentence closes the sale, and it should be the first line of the paragraph rather than a footnote at the bottom.

Put it at the front of the week, not the back. Madikwe is north of Johannesburg, in the same direction as Sun City. A guest who takes it before the group assembles simply comes down and joins the coach, and nothing about the tour changes. Taken at the back it means flying Cape Town to Johannesburg and out again, plus a deviation on the Singapore ticket. Sold at the front it is the easiest extension on this list to operate.

Two nights is the minimum and we would not sell one. A single night buys two drives and a long journey either side of them, and a guest who draws a quiet evening goes home disappointed by a reserve that did nothing wrong. If a passenger has only one night to spare, we would rather they kept the money than spent it on this.

Look at the bottom of the picture. That is a guest who stayed behind after breakfast, in the water with a glass of something, while the herd came down to drink in front of him. No vehicle, no drive, no early start. It happens most days, and it is why we say a guest who never left the lodge would still go home having seen Africa.

The safari with nothing to explain away

Big Five, wild dog, seventy-five thousand hectares and no tablets. It is the easiest safari on this list to sell and the easiest to operate. Tell us which departures to hold it against and we will contract it.

Visitors to Africa

Extra days · Zimbabwe

VictoriaFalls

Two nights added after the tour, flown from Johannesburg. The largest sheet of falling water on earth, and a hotel close enough to hear it from the garden.

This is sold to the passenger, not to the coach. Nothing about the eight days changes — these are two nights added on the end, for the guests who have flown eleven hours to get here and would rather not finish at an airport.

The people who take it are usually the same two or three couples on every departure: the ones who have been to Africa once and will not come again soon, and who would rather spend a little more than wonder about it later. It is the strongest extension in this part of the world for an Asian group, and it sells itself in a photograph.

The local name is Mosi-oa-Tunya — the smoke that thunders. You hear it before you see it, and from five miles away the spray stands in a column above the trees like a bush fire. Livingstone reached it in 1855 and named it after his queen; everyone who lives there still calls it the other thing.

It is a mile and a half wide and a hundred metres deep, and the whole Zambezi falls into a crack in the earth at once. No photograph has ever managed it, which is the entire argument for going.

The rainforest walk runs the length of the falls — sixteen viewpoints, and it rains on you the whole way from the spray coming back up.

Where they sleep — and there are two right answers

Because this is sold to the guest rather than the coach, you do not have to choose one. Two or three couples extending on the same departure can go to different hotels, which is something you could never do with thirty people. So we would put both in front of them and let them pick, at the same price.

The question to ask the passenger is simple: do you want to walk to the falls, or do you want the animals to come to you?

Ilala Lodge — the walk

The nearest hotel to the entrance, on the edge of the national park, about a kilometre from the gate. They walk there at six in the morning on a whim, and with the doors open at night they hear the water from the garden. Proper four-star, and the Palm Restaurant is good enough to make dinner an occasion. For the guest who came for the falls, this is the one.

Victoria Falls Safari Lodge — the waterhole

Four kilometres out on a ridge above the bush, with a permanent waterhole below the deck. Elephant, buffalo, kudu and warthog come down to drink while your guests are having a drink of their own, and there is a vulture feeding every afternoon. Ask for a waterhole-facing room; the standard rooms look the other way and that is the whole point of the place. For the guest who took no safari extension, this is a second bite at the game they came for.

The Victoria Falls Hotel — the upgrade to either

Nineteen-oh-four, colonial, Leading Hotels of the World. The lawn looks straight down the gorge at the bridge with the spray rising behind it, and high tea on Stanley’s Terrace is the photograph that goes home. This is what you sell to the couple who have decided this is the trip.

How the guest chooses

Ask them one question and the answer is usually immediate. Somebody who wants to be at the falls at first light with a coffee, on their own, goes to Ilala. Somebody who wants to sit on a deck with a drink and watch elephant walk down to water goes to the Safari Lodge. Both are two nights, both are the same price, and there is no wrong answer.

This is the view from Ilala. You do not go and look at the falls here — you have breakfast with the smoke standing over the trees and you walk down when you feel like it.

This is the upgrade, and this is why. The lawn runs from the terrace to the edge of the gorge, with the bridge at the end of it and the spray standing behind. You cannot buy this view anywhere else in Africa.

The Victoria Falls Hotel

The upgrade, for the guest who has decided this is the trip.

It has stood here since 1904, built for the passengers coming up the new railway. It is the only hotel in this town with a history rather than a brochure, and the dining room still has the grand piano and the chandeliers to prove it. A guest does not need to sleep here to sit on that terrace — but the ones who do will tell you it was the best money they spent on the whole eight days.

The Flight of Angels — twelve or fifteen minutes over the falls and the gorges. Expensive, optional, and the thing they will show people first.

What the two days hold

Enough to be full and not so much that it becomes another itinerary. They have just finished eight days of being somewhere at a particular time.

The falls, properly

The rainforest walk along the rim, sixteen viewpoints and about two hours. Raincoats provided and genuinely needed. This is the one thing that is not optional.

Sunset on the Zambezi

A cruise on the river above the falls, with hippo and elephant on the banks and the sun going down into the water. Included, and the evening everybody remembers.

The bridge

Opened in 1905, spanning the gorge between two countries, with the falls at your shoulder. Worth the walk out onto it. The bungee is there for anybody mad enough.

The Flight of Angels

Twelve to fifteen minutes by helicopter over the falls and down the zigzag gorges. Quoted separately because not everyone wants it, and the ones who do will pay without blinking.

Lunch on the Stanley Terrace

Even for guests staying at Ilala. An hour at the Victoria Falls Hotel with the bridge and the spray in front of you costs very little and buys the whole colonial set piece without paying to sleep in it.

The market and the town

Small, walkable and used to visitors. Stone carving, basketry and textiles, and the guide goes with them so nobody overpays or feels hustled.

Nothing at all

A pool, a long lunch and an afternoon doing none of it. After eight days on a coach that is a legitimate use of a day and we would say so.

The river runs wide and slow a mile upstream of the drop, with hippo and elephant on the banks. Two hours on the water as the light goes, and it is included in the rate.

A mile and a half of Zambezi going over the edge at once. In April there is so much spray you cannot see the bottom.

The falls are not the same in April as in November

This is the thing nobody tells a guest, and it decides whether they come home delighted or faintly disappointed. The Zambezi rises and falls by an enormous margin through the year, and the falls are a different sight in each of your five departures.

April — the floodOverwhelming, and half hidden in its own spray
July and AugustThe best balance: full water, and you can still see the rock
October and NovemberLowest water. Clearer views, more rock, less thunder

April is the most dramatic and the least photographable — the spray comes up so hard that from most viewpoints you are looking at weather rather than water, and everybody gets soaked to the skin. It is magnificent and it is not what the postcard promised.

July and August are the ones we would sell hardest. Enough water to thunder, little enough that the face of the falls is visible.

And we would not apologise for October and November. John Sparks writes about the falls in low water in September Tides — chapter thirty, “Smoke, Stone and Sky” — and his account of it is the reason we say what we say next.

What he saw when the river was low

From September Tides by John Sparks — chapter thirty, “Smoke, Stone and Sky”.

In the book he comes to the falls in September, at the leanest the Zambezi gets, and the argument he makes is that this is not the lesser version of the thing. With the water down, the falls read as what they actually are: a long straight cut in the earth, with the carved terraces and the zigzag channels of a million years of water laid open to be looked at. In flood you see spray. In low water you see the architecture.

The sound changes too. He describes it as insistent rather than deafening — a quietness, of all things, in which the shape of the place finally becomes legible. The spray goes up in slow breaths with the rainbows standing in it, and the walk down takes three quarters of an hour through mist that thickens until the air is raining on you. At the viewpoint, he writes, language steps politely aside.

There is game on that river as well — elephant in the shallows with calves throwing themselves in with no dignity whatsoever, giraffe moving along the bank, lion in loose file keeping to the shade.

He also lunches at the Victoria Falls Hotel and does not pretend the building has a comfortable history. That is the tone we would want a guide to take on this walk: Livingstone came here in 1855 and named it after his queen, and the people who lived on this river had a name for it already.

Worth putting in front of a guest. The chapter is on the website and it is two pages long. A passenger who reads it before they choose their departure will understand why October is a different sight from April rather than a worse one — and that is a conversation your sales staff will be very glad not to have afterwards.

What two nights cost

Net to Go365, per person sharing, for the two nights after day seven. Flown from Johannesburg, transfers both ends, two nights with breakfast at either Ilala Lodge or Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, the rainforest walk with a registered guide, park fees, and the Zambezi sunset cruise.

	Net, per person	Approx. USD
Two nights, Ilala Lodge	R13,900	$870
A third night	R1,700	$110
Waterhole-facing room at the Safari Lodge, per night	R420	$30
Upgrade to the Victoria Falls Hotel, per night	R1,450	$90
The Flight of Angels, per person	R4,300	$270

The airfare is most of this figure. Johannesburg to Victoria Falls and back is the single largest line, which means the third night costs very little by comparison and is much the better value of the two. We would quote both and let the passenger choose.

These are working figures. Nothing here is contracted and nothing should be sold to a passenger until it is confirmed in writing.

Two things to settle before this is sold

The visa is done online, before they fly. Zimbabwe runs an eVisa service, so nobody needs to queue at an embassy in Bangkok and nobody should be relying on getting one at the airport. It is a short application and a card payment, and the approval comes back by email to be printed and carried. We would put it in the booking confirmation the day the extension is sold, with a reminder three weeks out — because the one way this goes wrong is a passenger who leaves it until the week before. Tell us the passport nationalities on each booking and we will confirm the current fee and processing time at the time.

They will not fly home with the group. Day seven puts the coach on the road at six for the Singapore service. Anyone staying on needs a deviation on the ticket or a separate onward booking out of Johannesburg. That is your side of the arrangement and it is the thing most likely to stop this working, so settle it with the airline before it goes in front of anybody.

Built in 1905, between two countries, with the spray reaching it on a high-water day.

Two nights, and they will talk about it for twenty years

It is the easiest thing on this proposal to sell and the one your passengers are most likely to say yes to. Tell us which departures you would like it held against and we will contract the beds and the seats.

Visitors to Africa

Three things to read

The three hotels

Five departures, one rate

What we bring to it

The Palace, held

Drivers inside their hours

Days built in the right order

Weather that does not become a complaint

A Thai-speaking guide, included

Whose ground this is

A note after every departure

Every day, if you need it

Getting there

On the ground

Where they sleep

Why two of the days run the way they do

Day five

Day six

The thinking

The day, hour by hour

Landing

The Voortrekker Monument

The Union Buildings — ten minutes

West into the Magaliesberg

Lunch on the road

On to Sun City

The Palace of the Lost City

Two hours of their own

Game drive, Pilanesberg

Dinner at the hotel

Who is where

The thinking

The day, hour by hour

Breakfast, and the road south

The Lion Park

Lunch

Mall of Africa

The boma dinner

The road in to the airport

Peermont Metcourt, Emperors Palace

Who is where

The thinking

The day, hour by hour

Breakfast, and O.R. Tambo

Johannesburg to Cape Town

Lunch

Table Mountain

Dinner

Who is where

The thinking

The day, hour by hour

Constantia

The road between the estates

Lunch

West Coast Ostrich Farm

The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront

Their own

Who is where

The thinking

The day, hour by hour

Hout Bay, and the seals

Chapman’s Peak Drive

Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope

Lunch at the water

Boulders Beach

Dinner

Who is where

The thinking

The day, hour by hour

Porters

Departure

Check-in

SQ479

The report

Who is where

The rooms

Superior Room

Junior Suite

Superior Suite

King Suite