African Safari/Beach Honeymoon
Posted by DJ_Double_Juice@reddit | Shoestring | View on Reddit | 2 comments
Hi everyone!! My fiance and I decided we want to go to Africa for our honeymoon to see beautiful beaches and wildlife and are trying to figure out the best options. I don't know what our exact budget will be yet.. Obviously the cheaper the better but it is our honeymoon, so probably spend slightly more on this than a standard trip. Maybe around $10k all in? Is that considered shoestring if we want to be gone for at least 2 weeks and make the most of it! We get married in March of 2025 and are looking at going anytime next summer. We are both pretty flexible.
We are thinking of this trip so far in 3 different parts-
Part 1 is relaxing beach time. I absolutely LOVE snorkeling and seeing marine life so I would want to be where that is easily accessible. But we would happily take some excursions too. I've heard Seychelles is more expensive than Zanzibar? Is it worth it? We want somewhere relaxing and beautiful where we can see beautiful blue water and marine life so maybe there are other places we aren't looking into. We wouldn't mind having some night life but also not opposed to this being more about relaxing and seeing the underwater world.
Part 2 is Safari. Since it is our honeymoon I know there should be a relaxing aspect to it and I have seen the instagram posts with pools overlooking the nature reserves... and while that would be amazing, is it worth it? I'm not afraid to get a little dirty to see as many animals as I can up close in their natural habitat. It looks like if we are coming from Seychelles/Zanzibar that Tanzania is the closest for Safaris and from my minimal research it looks like thats a good option. But open to other suggestions!
Lastly for part 3 we are thinking Cape Town. Cage diving with Great Whites has always been on our bucket list. So we want to make sure we get to do that. As well as see some penguins on the beach. But now that all the wildlife has been taken care of, we also want to explore the nightlife here! Try the food and go to fun bars. If this is the last stop on the trip we want to go out with a bang.
Hoping to get some good recommendations of places to go and how to divvy up the trip the best way possible. Thank you in advance!!
marktthemailman@reddit
I haven’t been to the Seychelles so cant offer any insights there. Zanzibar/Tanzania is a good combo though. Kendwa on zanzibar is a great laid back beach with a good popular bar at Kendwa Rocks where you can do snorkeling trips. You could also stay say 2 nights in stonetown. You can also do a snorkelling trip (theres a nice sandbar to check out). and spice tour from stonetown. Touts are a bit of a hassle in stonetown, but tats all part of the experience.
There are lots of safari operators that do a 5 ish night tour covering Ngorongoro crater, Serengeti and Tarangire. Here is a general sample that I found online just now. https://shashishanbhag.com/travel/5-day-tanzania-safari-serengeti-ngorongoro-crater-tarangire/. My wife and i did a budget version of this trip many years ago.
So you probably need 5 nights, zanzibar min, 6 nights safari (including at least one night in/out of arusha). So you have used up most of your 2 weeks. If you want to go to Capetown aswell I’d recommend another week and do something like 3 or 4 nights capetown and maybe 2 nights Stellenbosch and or Garden route with cave diving on the way. You might be able to do cave diving as a day trip from capetown (we didnt do that). We did go to capepoint and saw the penguins at boulder bay. That was cool.
My wife and I actually eloped some 15 years ago whilst backpacking through africa. We got married in Capetown and then had our ‘honeymoon’ in Stellenbosch - hence my suggestion. I can recommend to stay at Cape Heritage Hotel, which is a renovated boutique hotel centrally located. They were super helpful and organised the wedding for us (at no cost), we just stayed there and paid for the room and paid the photographer and celebrant directly. The staff were our witnesses. Stellenbosch is wine country and is full of really nice restaurants and great to drive around.
My info is a bit dated…but I don’t actually think these areas change significantly with time. You will get more advice on R/travel if you want it.
DJ_Double_Juice@reddit (OP)
This is amazing feedback thank you for the thought out response! I am going to look into all of these places!