Southern Africa - $247.46
*Update – Due to our negative experience on our overlanding journey we were refunded $1,005, which has helped to reduce our expenses in Southern Africa by $32 per day. While we did not consider this a satisfactory reimbursement due to the litany of issues we had to deal with, we were told it was the only offer we would be receiving and have chosen to move on from this whole matter.*
We always knew that Southern Africa would be our most expensive destination this year. Primarily because of the overlanding journey we booked as both our mode of transportation and accommodation across the five countries that made up this portion of our trip. This 25 day journey cost us $6,467, or almost $210 per day, before we even landed in South Africa. Obviously this is already above our daily target but we had always put aside more money for this leg to make sure we didn’t leave with a huge hole burning in our pocket. Apart from this our primary expenses in Southern Africa were from Food & Groceries and Lodging. While we didn’t have any $0 spending categories in Southern Africa, Flights only cost us $2.92 per day for one flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town, and Visas only cost $1.94 per day coming from a $30 per person visa for Zimbabwe.
As mentioned above, our far and away largest source of spending in South Africa came from our 25 day overlanding “budget” safari. The price of this overlanding trip included all transportation, lodging, most meals, and most park entries but excluded personal snacks, water, alcoholic drinks, and some optional activities. While this trip is sold as a “budget” adventure, the ancillary costs quickly add up, especially on the five days we spent in towns where meals like lunch and dinner weren’t included. We also spent about one hundred dollars on ancillary activities like a 4x4 drive in Etosha National Park and a visit to the national park on the Zimbabwean side of Victoria Falls. All in all, we walked away from this “budget” trip with a greater understanding of its true cost and a realization that we probably could have seen all of our highlights for less money if we had hired a 4x4 for a self-drive.
Our next two largest categories of spending largely came from our six days pre- and post-overlanding trip, Food & Groceries and Lodging. While we did spend about $400 on Food & Groceries during our overlanding trip, this works out to only about $16 per day, again mainly coming from our stops in Swakopmund, Windhoek, and Victoria Falls. In our other six days we spent $360 or about $60 per day on Food & Groceries, reflecting the cost of being in the big city. For those six days we also spent $311, or about $50 per day on our AirBnBs. We found accommodation overall pretty reasonable in Southern Africa and really enjoyed both of our AirBnBs in Cape Town and in Johannesburg.
Our final large category of spending here was Miscellaneous, I know a very helpful description. Here that mainly meant cash we had gotten out in various currencies, a couple of stops at the laundromat, and tips throughout our trip. While we were surprised at how widely accessible card payments are, even in rural stretches of this region, cash is still necessary for some small shops and is preferred by some activity providers.
Finally we had several categories with very small levels of spending in South Africa; Activities, Other Transportation, Flights, and Visas. Activities across our time in the city, like the Bo Kaap or District 6 museum, as well as on our trip, like our 4x4 in Etosha cost us an average of $9.25 per day. We primarily used Uber to get around while in South Africa's larger cities, which ended up costing us $4.36 per day over our entire month here. We had one flight, a domestic hop from Johannesburg to Cape Town which cost us $90 at the beginning of our time here. Finally, we had one visa to pay for when we entered Zimbabwe which cost us $30 each or only $1.94 per day.