Hugh’s Tips on Susan’s Story about Our South Africa & Zimbabwe Adventure Feb 2007

We highly recommend the Intercontinental Santon Hotel. We felt safe and were one block away from the Nelson Mandela Center. The downtown mall started in the parking garage of our hotel. There is a great Thai restaurant in the Nelson Mandella Center with an outside terrace we thought was world class.

Kings Camp was everything we expected and more. We never saw a fly or mosquito. This was summer and this was the only place we wanted to nap in the hot mid day. We were advised by the Center for Disease Control to take prophylaxis for malaria and we took Larium as we often do in nonresistant areas. We never saw a mosquito in all of South Africa but I saw some in Zimbabwe. Don’t forget that your weekly Larium has to be started one week before the trip. We have to take this medication several times each year because of our travels. Insect repellant is a fact of life. We believe that DEET is the only choice these days. Don’t forget that that 100% DEET reacts with nylon as Fred found on our trip. We use a roll-on these days but also like sprays. On some trips we have been on we have found that only 100% DEET is effective so we always carry some but didn’t need it at all in 2007 or 2006.

South African Airways is now one of our favorite. The service couldn’t have been better!!!

Everyone on our trip was extremely well prepared and packed light. Laundry facilities were available everywhere and hair dryers and in-room safes were in every room everywhere. Be absolutely sure you know the maximum weight limits for your most limiting flight.

Ikapa tours and travels provided us with a great guide and van. Highly recommended.

This was our 6^th or 7^th trip with Aims Travel. We have never had any problems and feel these are good values for the money. To get adequate CME’s though, we have learned to contact all of the participants before going and have everyone prepare interesting lectures to give. There are always waiting times in airports and travel days to get in the lectures. We got 25 hours credit for the trip but it required everyone to work and take this seriously.

Exchange rates were very favorable to the dollar in South Africa. We ate in great restaurants for what we thought was a steal! In Zimbabwe we were told to deal only in dollars or South African Rand and never use our credit cards because there is no definite exchange rate and over 1000% inflation. Get prices in dollars or rand & pay cash including hotel bills etc. No one in our group used travelers checks and we feel that their usefulness is almost nonexistent for our travels the last few years. We found ATM’s everywhere in South Africa and credit cards accepted everywhere (more so than in the US).

I took only digital photos on this trip with my Nikon D70 and my Sony DCR-HC40 camcorder. I wished I had used a lens hood on the Nikkor 18-70 1:3.5-4.5G lens. I did use a hood to good advantage on my Sigma 70-300 1:4-5.6D lens. I never needed a longer lens than that & never used a teleconverter. I did enjoy having my macro lens at Kings Camp. Contrary to my experience on tropical adventures, I had little trouble with fogging and it was only on the outer lens surface, never internal. I carry a small piece of travel towel tied around my camera strap for this and learned from kayak trips that this works best. A Wolverine or similar portable hard drive (or a laptop) to download compact flash cards is worth it’s weight in gold. Circular polarizers make little difference this close to the equator & I stopped trying to find a use for it quickly. I appreciated a sky filter, especially in Cape Town in the summer.

We found 220 volts only, and there is a special adapter for South Africa that we have never seen anywhere else. We used British plugs/adapters in Zimbabwe. Since all of my battery chargers, etc can use 220 volts, I just use an adapter on the plug of a regular power strip and plug in the chargers as usual. Worked great! We do carry a travel iron that can be changed to 200Volts.

The Victoria & Alfred Hotel was clearly the best choice on the waterfront in Cape Town.

Dining is world class in Cape Town.

/Hugh

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