UKC

Very likely heading here at the end of June, firstly regarding flights. Direct (return) comes in at £890 from LHR and flights with a brief stop in Johannesburg (so only adding 3 hours to direct flights) comes in at £600. Would anyone with some experience doing this like to comment on if it's worth saving £290 for non-direct? They are both overnight flights.

Any other general advice, especially regarding accommodation and hire cars is gladly welcomed.

In reply to cha1n:

Fly Emirates Gatwick Cape Town 466 pounds.
Emirates have a sale on until 18th January.
I live in Cape Town but will not fly via JOBERG.
O. R. Tambo is not a pleasant experience.

In reply to Removed User:

Thanks, it's it really that bad? Have you done the direct fight to London?

In reply to cha1n:

When we flew we went via joburg and whilst it's a bit of a faff since you had to collect your luggage and carry it across to check in for the cape town flight I wouldn't have said it was a massively big deal. I think on the way back it was an automatic transfer. I certainly wouldn't pay £300 to avoid it. I'm not sure what the previous poster doesn't like about it but we didn't find it a particularly big deal.

I forget who we hired the car from but I think it was one of the big multinationals and we stayed at pakhuys in one of their houses and thoroughly enjoyed it.

In reply to AJM:

Thanks Andy. Someone on UKB said they did the same flight on two separate occasions with no issues. Seems like a goer, I forgot you went there!

In reply to cha1n:

Yeah had a brilliant trip

We went SAA since you can take a pad as sports equipment.

If you don't have one we have found the bang per buck of the little mini pads (the ones which are just an inch of hard foam) is quite good for trips where you fly with pads because it slots into an existing pad (so no more luggage), is fairly cheap and gives you a bit of versatility (and you can use it for starts to save bigger pads for elsewhere)

In reply to Removed User:



I've not had any experience of Jo'burg airport but still prefer to fly to a hub in Europe for cheaper flights. Just got back from Cape Town to Manchester via Istanbul with Turkish Airlines, who were miles cheaper than anyone else on that route over the holiday period.