Packaged Tour To South Africa • A Review

Traveling Again With Exoticca To South Africa

After our experience traveling with friends to South America using Exoticca we booked another trip with them. This time we went to South Africa for almost three weeks, just the two of us.

Our View Of Packaged Travel Tours

We’ve always been skeptical of packaged travel tours and if we’re really saving money and will we get to see the things we’re really interested in? Several years ago we wanted to visit Iguazu Falls and ended up booking our own trip from Buenos Aries to Iguazu Falls. We beat the 2 and 3 day package tour prices by over 50%. One of the packaged tours we did book was from North Dakota to Utah spending time in Yellowstone. The reason we booked that tour was because I had spent a couple of years trying unsuccessfully to book the Old Faithful Lodge.

These Exoticca packages are completely different. For comparisons I tried to duplicate our South American package tour by finding hotels, flights, along with allowances for tours, transfers and admission fees. I couldn’t come any nearer than 140% of the package price and I didn’t include any meal costs.

Reviews, Reviewers And A Grain Of Salt

First, our perspective on travel is based on decades of planning
international travel for ourselves. We’ve come to understand that it’s complicated and fraught with the unexpected and at times things still go wrong. Cancelled trains and delayed flights, lost reservations at hotels,
drivers not showing up and a lot worse. Our favorite expression has been “I
guess we’re not in Kansas anymore”.

Like everything today everyone turns to the internet for reviews, from hotels and restaurants to tours and much more. Lately though we’ve started discounting many bad reviews as more and more often we find that our own experiences just don’t match up with those bad reviewers. Today we’re in the habit of eliminating a number of the worst reviews when researching for a trip.

This was the case with Exoticca Travel. What we found initially was that many reviews of trips were pretty harsh, especially to Greece and North Africa . The most common complaint was nobody picked them up at the airport and some thought the hotels had been downgraded from the original selection. For Exoticca the reviews for Peru and Galapagos were much more positive except on TripAdvisor some moderators seemed to be holding a grudge that goes back years so we questioned what was going on with that?? TrustPilot was mostly positive but there are people who don’t trust TrustPilot. Our own experience in South America was very positive.

Now after two trips and talking to dozens of fellow tour travelers we’ve gathered a collection of opinions about Exoticca. that are mostly really positive. More than a few had traveled many times with Exoticca and several people had recently visited India. They had nothing but praise for the tours.

Our South Africa Tour Experience

On this trip we traveled by ourselves and the reservations, documents and schedules were all fine. What did we get for our US$4,400 packaged South Africa trip?

Once we got to Africa we became part of a tour that included 26 travelers and had a guide with us for 5 of the days. While we extended our stay in Cape Town half of our group went on to visit Victoria Falls for an additional 4 more days after Cape Town.

Flights (all flights included checked baggage)

• Florida to Newark and Newark to Johannesburg
• Pretoria to Cape Town, South Africa
• Cape Town to Newark and return to Florida

Accommodations

• 1 night in Johannesburg with breakfast
• 4 nights in a glamping resort in Kruger National Park with all meals
• 7 nights in a Cape Town Hotel with a good location and breakfast included

Tours and Transfers

• Bus from Johannesburg to Kruger National Park with 2 sightseeing stops along the way
• 2 full day safaris in Kruger National Park
• Bus from Kruger to Pretoria with 2 sightseeing stops
• An included 2 Days Hop-On Hop-Off bus pass in Cape Town and Tickets to Cable Car to Table Mountain
• Guided van day tour to the Cape of Good Hope
• Guided bus day tour to wine country
• Transfers to/from hotels and airports

For a second opinion on Exoticca from a travel professional click HERE. In our opinion considering the tours cost we got way more than our money’s worth. We have now booked an Exoticca Morocco trip for next year with our travel friends and will update you.