Southern

Africa

March 4 – 21, 2026

Introduction

First, please notice that the title above says “Southern Africa”, not “South Africa”.  South Africa is a specific country and, while we did spend a lot of time there, we also visited three other Southern Africa countries: Botswana, Nambia, and Zimbabwe.  Believe me, we have the passport stamps to show multiple visits to some of these countries.  Our many visits to a couple of the immigration offices got to be a joke after a while.

OK, down to talking about this trip…… As mentioned in a previous trip report, we have (somewhat unconsciously?) embarked on the task of visiting some of the more unusual or out-of-the-way places that we had not seen previously.  This trip was definitely a step in that direction.  We had talked to people who said that Africa is an amazing and very different place to visit, and we certainly found that to be true.  We also found the people to be very welcoming and friendly.  Even the sometimes rather aggressive vendors took a surprisingly friendly approach.  

I came across this tour almost by accident: we had taken an AMA Waterways river cruise a couple of years ago and I remembered something about them offering some kind of Africa cruise, so I investigated that.  It turned out that AMA has a rather small (26 passenger) “river boat” (the “Zambezi Queen”) and it is used as part of several different tours.  I looked at the different versions of the tours and decided that the “Stars of Southern Africa” was the best match for what we were looking for.

The Zambezi Queen

I inquired with our travel agent about a tour departure in June or July (winter there) but all tour seats were full for the entire year, so we went on the “wait list”.  About 6 weeks later the travel agent contacted me and asked if we wanted sets on the March 6 departure of the tour and I said “sure!”.  March is usually the end of their rainy season and not the best for seeing animals, but it was March or nothing.  The wet season turned out to have more significance than we expected.  Although we did not actually encounter much rain, Southern Africa has experienced their wettest summer in 30 years and the after effects were very evident in our travels.

For this report, I will use the same format as the past several reports with a daily log of our travels, excursions, and other activities, broken up into chapters of several days each.  I will describe the Zambezi Queen in some detail when we get to the section on when we boarded it.  I will insert a map of our travels here and at the beginning of each chapter so you can keep track of where we are.

The “Set-up”

As usual, we made all the cruise arrangements through the “Vacations to Go” travel company and Randol Key , our travel advisor there for river cruises, provided good service and answers to my questions.   I made the airline arrangements directly through Delta (more comments about that shortly).  In order to be on hand for our first tour activity, a reception and introductions on the evening of March 6, we flew in the previous day, arriving about 7:00 PM on March 5.  I had Randol Key get us an additional night at the Cape Town Hotel (the Cape Grace Hotel) and I set up an independent wine tour in the wine producing region close to Cape Town for the day of March 6.

Flight board at the gate

Our flight home would be out of Johannesburg late in the evening.  Since we would spend some time there earlier in our trip, we came home as soon as the tour was over rather than spending additional time in Johannesburg.

As part of the preparation for this trip, I found and studied trip reports of people who had taken the same tour in the recent past.  Of special interest for its completeness and usefulness was a very complete report by “bleacher04” on Cruise Critic.   Anyone considering this tour should definitely study this report.

Getting There and Back

As usual for people living in the Atlanta area, our flights were on Delta and were non-stop in both directions, but they were somewhat unique.  These flights are a couple of the very longest flights in service these days, and the very longest for Delta.  The flight from Atlanta to Cape Town was over 15 hours and the flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta was over 16 hours.  That is a long time to be in an airline seat, but it is better than having to use connecting flights and even longer total travel time.

Atlanta Terminal building at night

Our flight to Cape Town was scheduled for a 9:55 PM departure so we set  up a Uber service for 5:00, knowing we would be fighting Atlanta rush hour traffic.  We got checked in and enjoyed some time relaxing in the Delta Sky lounge (there might have been a glass or two of wine involved) before heading to the gate for an on-time departure.  We had Delta’s “Premium Select” seats, which are one step down from the “Delta-1” seats and provided reasonably comfortable seats. Dinner was served shortly after takeoff (almost 11:00 PM ) and was decent, but nothing memorable. As usual, I was able to get only a little sleep on the flight. With the time zone difference and the 15+ hour flight, we arrived at Cape Town a little after 7:00 PM the next day.  An AMA Waterways representative was there to meet us and got us into a private car for the ride to the hotel. 

Taxing to runway in Atlanta: 8,129 miles to go

Purely by coincidence, the return flight from Johannesburg also had a scheduled departure time of 9:55PM.  Since Delta only has a couple of flights out of Johannesburg, there is no Sky Lounge and Delta contracts with the “SLOW Lounge” for the use by Delta passengers and we spent several hours there.  On this flight we had the Delta-1 seats and had more room to stretch out.  The food was a bit better and the available wine was surprisingly good (Stag’s Leap anyone?).  Between the lay-flat seats and the long day, I was able to get probably 4 or 5 hours of sleep, very unusual for me.   I’ll cover more of the arrival and departure days as part of the main commentary.

The Itinerary

We’ll take a quick look at the full (planned) itinerary here.

Tour/Cruise Itinerary:

AMA Waterways Stars of Southern Africa

Day#  Date                  Activity/location

-1        Wed, March 4          Leave Atlanta: DL 210   Wed Mar 4, 9:55 PM

 0        Thur March 5           Arrive in Cape Town

                                            Transfer to Cape Grace hotel, check-in        

 1        Fri March 6              Self organized Excursion in Cape town (wine tour)

                                            AMA Reception (6:00) at hotel

 2        Sat March 7             Touring Cape Town (AMA) Table Moiuntain, Cape of Good Hope

 3        Sun March 8            Touring Cape Town: Wine tour or Robben Island

 4        Mon March 9           Early transfer – Airport to Zambia - Botswana – Namiba – Zambezi Queen

 5        Tue March 10           Zambezi Queen: Boat Safaris from the Queen morning and afternoon

 6        Wed March 11           Zambezi Queen: Land Safari of Chobe Nat’l Park (4x4s)

 7        Thur March 12           Zambezi Queen: Visit village & school, boat safari

 8        Fri March 13            Leave ZQ, to Victoria Falls: reception, steam train, sunset over Vic Falls

 9        Sat March 14           Victoria Falls: Full tour, sunset cruise on river, dinner & entertainment

10       Sun March 15          Leave Vic Falls, fly to Johannesburg, check in hotel

11       Mon March 16         Tour Johannesburg, including Soweto

12       Tue March 17          Fly to Kruger Nat’l Park, Check into Tintswalo Safari “Game Lodge”

13       Wed March 18         At Kruger NP: Early and late game drives

14       Thur March 19         At Kruger NP: Early and late game drives

15       Fri March 20            Early Game drive, then fly to Johannesburg to flight home (9:55 PM)

16       Sat March 21           Arrive ATL  8:45 AM

Our trip: Starting in Cape Town, ending in Johannesburg

Time to get started: as usual now, this report will be broken down into “Chapters” so you can digest it at a reasonable sized piece at a time.  Each chapter will be about 3 to 4 days of activities and there will, of course, be plenty of photos.  We start with Chapter 1 and our arrival into Cape Town.

Chapter by Chapter

Chapter 1: Cape Town

Chapter 2: On the Zambezi Queen

Chapter 3: Victoria Falls and Johannesburg

Chapter 4: Tintswalo Game Lodge in Kruger Park

Some closing thoughts

While putting together this report, I have also created a couple of “slide-show” videos from photos and videos taken during the tour and cruise.  I’ve mentioned some, but not all, of them during the report, so here is a recap of the videos that are available on Youtube.

Cape Town sight-seeing:               https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gij0LVbXEyc

Chobe River on the Zambezi Queen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8URAu61D5k       

Tintswalo Lodge, Kruger Nat’l Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XrnOPA6OnU

In General

This trip had a little bit (or a lot) of several different kinds of things: Scenic sightseeing (Table Mountain, Cape of Good Hope, Victoria Falls), human rights/social education (Robben Island, Soweto, Mandela House, village and school in Namibia), wild animals (Chobe river, Kruger Park), and it even started off by tasting some good wines.  Overall, it was a trip we can feel good about for the educational aspects, but was also great for forming lots of interesting memories.  Most of the stops along the way were probably “once in a lifetime” experiences, but then sometimes I think I’d like to see some of the sights when there is a little less water to contend with.  We’ll see… 

I hope you enjoyed this trip report.  If you have any comments or corrections, please send them to me at: mhammoc@bellsouth.net