We’ve been back, safe and sound, from our trip to Cape Town and South Africa for about three weeks. Before we left a lot of people asked how we put together the trip and whether or not we were going with a tour group or going solo the whole time. Our trip was put together by Ernest Lopes at Wildlife Africa.

Ernest was very knowledgeable. We had already been talking with two other travel agents in South Africa but neither one could put together a trip that we liked. Ernest was able to offer up suggestions such as getting a ride from the airport to our first hotel rather than trying to find our way in a rental car. He was able to get that and have our rental car delivered to our hotel without raising the price of the trip.

Ernest at Wildlife Africa made the trip easy. He booked every single hotel passing along 100% of the savings from hotel and safari off-season specials. He booked every single transfer including car, plane, and 3 seater plane transfers.

At one point, one of the safari lodges mixed up our transfer. I called Ernest to explain and tried to ask for information that I could relay on to the lodge. He stopped me, said not to worry, he would call them and sort it out. Two minutes later, the people at the lodge said it was all sorted out and we were on our way. Great after the sale service is a trademark of a quality company.

I highly recommend booking with Safari Africa. It was so nice to know you had someone who would take care of anything. He really understood what we were looking for and how to make it easy for us to get it.

Thanks Ernest.

We’re on our last full day of safari before we head back to Cape Town to finish off our South Africa trip. I don’t think we have ever eaten as much as we have in the past week. Each meal is enough to feed a small village.

For dinner, the safari lodges rotate between a brai buffet and served 3 course meals. The dessert course at Kirkman’s Kamp is about the size of what we might go through in a week or two at home. The Bayethe Lodge in Shamwari serves two breakfasts. Last night our butler surprised us with a full dinner on our back patio.

In a typical day, you spend about 8 hours on safari and close to 6 hours eating. And if you start to slow down, there is tremendous peer pressure to keep eating. Jennifer was asked 4 or 5 times this morning why she wasn’t going to have any hot breakfast. After all, she only had a croissant, fruit, bacon, mixed nuts, milk, and tea.