Trip to South Africa
Good afternoon, I want to leave a review about the trip. Hope it helps someone.
I went to South Africa as part of a small group. The trip itself was developed by the agency, so I can’t give any useful information to savage tourists. My goal is to awaken travelers' interest in this unique country and help them make the right choice to visit it : -).
The only negative in the whole trip is the duration of the flight. In total, the flight is 15 hours + time at the airport.
It should be noted that I flew with KLM lines: a monitor was installed in each seat with the ability to watch a video, drinks were delivered about once every half an hour, food was fed 4 times during the flight. In general, everything is quite comfortable.
Our first stop was in Sun City. I will not write much about the hotel. The hotel is excellent, the service is beyond praise, the rooms have everything or almost everything. The territory is huge, well-groomed, you feel like in a fairy tale. The luxury is incredible. A separate word about food. Throughout the trip, I was amazed and admired the quality of food and the professionalism of South African chefs. So delicious as in South Africa, I have not eaten anywhere : -). I don’t know what the secret is, or as products (and it is, believe me, very high) or in the air of this country, but simple stewed mushrooms or even a cold salad with boiled potatoes is something. In general, even if the hotels were not very good, this is not the main thing in South Africa. The country itself is what matters. A mixture of cultures, traditions, this is a whole cauldron. Kipling wrote: "East and West will never meet" South Africa almost succeeded. The white conquerors brought their customs, culinary culture, desire for comfort, neatness to the country, and the local land absorbed all this and the result turned out: excellent roads, excellent service, excellent cuisine. . . You can talk a lot about how brutally the white conquerors treated the local population. But it was they who made this land fertile, it was they who began to mine gold, stones, and use all the riches of this land in full. In South Africa, the main thing is nature. No matter what camera you shoot, no matter what angle, all the frames are obtained as for a glossy magazine. Such a beautiful sky, such a VARIOUS and VARIOUS GREEN is nowhere else to be seen. In South Africa, it is surprising that comfort is adjacent to nature. You drive along a chic highway, you come to the ocean, you sit on the shore dreaming, and a baboon walks by on business or a cormorant flies by. Although, according to the guide, many animals and plants have already been almost exterminated, anyway, in South Africa, like nowhere else, it seems to you that you got 1000 years ago, when the animal gods ruled the world, people understood the language of birds, and the earth was still standing turtles. Sun City we visited the local wildlife park. And even though every bush in the savannah was planted by a landscape designer, you still find yourself in the wild and, most importantly, just have time to click giraffes, antelopes, elephants grazing peacefully in this huge park. In general, to visit Africa and not visit any national park is a sin.
For reference, dinner in a restaurant will cost 25-50 USD with wine. Wines in South Africa are some of the best. The clue is again in the local land and the wine culture of Europe. The French Huguenots brought here the tradition of growing grapes and making wine. The mixture of earth, air and diligence of winegrowers works wonders. Good wine can be bought from $5 to $20. There is, of course, and for 3000, this is also a good wine : -). The wine-visiting card of South Africa is Pinotage (red wine).
Two days later we flew to Cape Town. A flight with local airlines cost about 160 USD from Johannesburg airport. The airport is excellent. Again, the hand of white planters is visible everywhere. People created a country for themselves: rich, comfortable.
Cape Town for me is one of the most beautiful and unique cities in the world. The natural landscape, the mixture of Dutch and French architecture, the blue-blue sky, the constant breeze from the ocean and Table Mountain, make this city a must-see. The city is located at the foot of the table mountain. In fact, the mountain is ringed by the cities themselves. Wherever you are, you can see it everywhere. A visit to the table mountain is a must. A ticket to the mountain costs about 30 USD. Quite often it is covered with clouds, and there is no point in climbing it. But if you show a little patience, then one of the days of your stay you will definitely get on it, the view that opens up to you on the city and the ocean will make you forget about everything. In the city we stayed at the PROTEA chain hotel. Again, a fairly rich breakfast (fresh, several types of yogurt, meat, cheese, side dishes, fruits, etc. ), in general, you won’t stay hungry for sure. The rooms are clean, everything is there. Judging by Europe (Croatia, Spain), the level of the hotel is a solid 4 or 4+. The hotel is located in a prosperous area, next to a huge supermarket, private apartments and the road to the ocean.
I want to warn you though: South Africa is not a country where you can even wander around the city and study it during the day. ONLY in a car, only accompanied and only during the day! Everything they say about crime in South Africa is true. Only blacks or very, very poor whites walk around the city on foot. Another feature of South Africa is that each building is ringed with barbed wire and each fence is under high voltage. And yet, this city is worthy of admiration. A day is enough to get to know him. But you should not spend all your free time in Cape Town. From Cape Town, you can quickly get to the Cape of Good Hope, stop by a small town to look at penguins, dine in one of the many restaurants serving fresh seafood and go further, tasting the famous South African wines. A visit to the Cape of Good Hope and penguins is a MUST! come home and tell your friends how they looked at penguins in Africa : -)). Also, the guide can offer you to stop by small private (all-private property in Africa) jewelry stores. Don't give up. This is not Turkey, this is Africa. The quality of gold, stones and the products themselves is quite high. Moreover, a good guide will not take you to a bad place. Capitalism - everyone values his reputation. You don’t even have to buy jewelry yourself, in the store you can buy faceted stones for every taste and budget. It is much cheaper, and it seems to me that bringing a stone from Africa means bringing a piece of this country. Or you can just buy a handful of gems that will be tastefully packaged for you. In general, in Africa there is a very large selection of souvenirs, good quality and prices for any level of solvency. Chinese production has not yet reached Africa, so you can be sure that you are carrying a souvenir of really African production.
And, of course, visit a couple of wine farms. Architecture, wine selection, service - all at the highest level. Many farms also make cheeses and all kinds of pasta for food. Don't be stingy - buy a little bit of everything. Cheeses, like wine, were brought to South Africa by the French Huguenots. Right on the farm, they will let you taste wine and cheese, and even leave you for lunch. There is nothing like a wonderful picnic in the shade of huge oaks or maples with excellent wine. This is how the white population of South Africa spends their weekends. People just go to their favorite farm and spend the whole day in nature, tasting all the delights of this holiday. So don't think that it's like in the Czech Republic, when only tourists are taken to the cellars for tasting : -).
For those who cannot afford a guide in Cape Town, there is a sightseeing bus. Buying one ticket, you have the right to ride this bus all day with the right to exit and board at any point on the route. In general, a fairly common type of tourist transport, who has been in Europe knows about such buses. It was thanks to this that I was able to visit the Kirstenbosch botanical garden and go around the whole city in a circle. A visit to the Botanical Garden is a must!! ! There are NO words to describe this beauty. Each bush is well-groomed, each landscape is a view of the Garden of Eden. And what kind of grass is there! This is a special kind of grass - bull grass. It is so soft and grows almost horizontally that five minutes of barefoot walking on it can replace a year's visit to a psychoanalyst. By the way, it is allowed to walk on this grass in the Botanical Garden : -).
Even if you are not in the mood to visit excursion routes, you can simply spend time in a huge number of restaurants and souvenir shops. The quality of food, as I said, is excellent. The price of dinner per person is from 15 to 50 USD.
The water in South Africa is very clean. According to experts, it ranks third in the world in terms of purity, but it is still better to buy bottled water. Another feature of Africa: contrary to our ideas about the climate of this country, after six in the evening the temperature drops to 15-17 degrees. As for Cape Town, I was not hot at all. A constant breeze from the ocean keeps you from frying and dying of stuffiness.
If you want to find yourself, to understand who you are on this earth, if you want to know where the human race came from, if you set out to find a piece of Paradise on earth, then you just need to go to South Africa. Sitting on the shores of two oceans (Indian and Atlantic), breathing in the smell of sea water and the aroma of steppe grasses, listening to the sound of waves and the singing of strange birds, you will find answers to all your questions, receive the blessing of nature and understand that all problems come and only the desire for happiness and self-knowledge forever.