I plan to go s.a in Feburay what is the ideal time scale required and what budget do you think i will require. I plan to stay for 3 weeks is this sufficent and plan on about £10.00 aday is this enough.

All replies much appreciated.

Thankyou.............

Are you sure you mean ten pounds? What sort of places are you expecting to stay in. We're looking at SA next year but our budget is quite a bit more than that. There is definitely some cheap accommodation around, especially compared to the UK, but 10 quid doesn't sound like enough to survive on.

I spent roughly between 20 and 50 pound per day, that included everything (accomodation in a hostel, food, safari, buspass etc.) except the flight.

I've to say that I wanted to enjoy myself and did what I really wanted to do wether it was expensive or not.

My wife and I travelled through SA two years ago with our sleeping bags. The cheapest accommodations were the hostels that were listed in a free paper back book that was given out at each hostel. The book was great. Our cheapest accommodation was about $12 US for two including breakfast, but the average was almost twice that. Altogether, the two of us averaged about $60 US per day then (about 600 Rand) in the countryside and about $100 per day in the larger Cities. It was about one third bed, one third travel, and one third everything else. I don't think we could have travelled much cheaper without spending a lot more time finding cheaper services. Since then prices and exchange rates have changed. In the fifteen countries we visited, SA was the most expensive.

To give you an idea

1. a night in a hostel dorm = 6GBP
2. a beer = 0.75GBP
3. a (cheap) meal = 2GPB
4. trip up table mountain in the cable car= 10GBP
5. bus ticket from cape town to jo'burg = 30GBP

better make it 25.

The South African Rand is presently at its strongest level in 6 years, so travelling round SA will be a lot more expensive now than when it was a couple of years ago.

Some exchange rates on 23 December 2004 are as follows :

1 US Dollar = R 5.64
1 Pound Sterling = R 10.84
1 Euro = R 7.59

In comparison, in 2002 it was nearly 11 Rand to the dollar !

February is the best time to visit SA, because :
(1) The weather is great (very hot in places).
(2) You miss the main tourist season, which is early December to mid-January (summer school holidays down here).

Enjoy your visit ...

Hi
we are just back from South Africa, travelling all over. There is no way you'll manage on £10 a day. With the strength of the pound, we found it a lot more expensive from even when we'd booked our flights in February. Things that were "reasonable" then ended up being expensive (and I've the credit card bill to show for it). I didn;t even buy anything when I was there- a few crafts in KwaZuluNatal and thats it. The people we stayed with all said that there are less tourists because its now so expensive. You can get a cheap meal for £2 if you eat in burger places all the time...but Im guessing you don't want to do that. Its hard for me to guess how much a day you could just manage on because we were on an OK budget, but seriously, try thinking about how much a cheap day out in UK costs and then add on £10 for accomodation. But still go!! We had the most amazing time.