Cape town to Cape town cruise?

[fudge]

We are on the Splendor for Christmas and new year, to be honest the excursions are not that exciting. We were hoping to see a few Vineyard trips. Can anyone please tell me if you see any local guides when you leave the ship offering that service. 

Thank you for any replies. 

[PaulaJK]

Suggest booking a private guide for a full day tour of CPT’s surrounding areas and for

a full day’s tour of the winelands. Lunch in a vineyard is lovely.

[irishwitchy]

Since you start and end in CapeTown, why not go spent a very nights in the wine region and enjoy a bunch of vineyards?   I Will make one comment, as much as I was there in October one year for multiple nights (we had a driver),   I have no idea if the vineyards close down around the holidays.  

[hamasgirl]

We did the Capetown to Capetown cruise with Regent pre-Covid.  I can't answer your question about vineyards but I would agree that doing a vineyard tour either pre- or post-cruise is preferable and Regent did offer that back when we cruised.

 

One thing tho...basically S Africa closes down for the month of December to celebrate.  When we took tours in various ports, any public place (like a museum) would only be open for the tour folks for the duration of the tour.  We also found that the locals were doing caravan vacations (what we call camping) in many of the seaside venues limiting where we could walk/visit on our own.

 

We had taken advantage of the pre-cruise game reserve stay that was offered by Regent which was magical and many of the ports offered day visits to various reserves which people enjoyed.  So I would say that game reserve visits are some of the best tours to think about for this cruise.

[fudge]

Thank you everyone for your replies, most helpful. I have researched wine tours, they are plentiful and quite reasonable. 

[makai 7]

We used a private driver/guide for the day we disembarked (evening flight home).  We visited wineries, chocolatier, and had a wonderful relaxing lunch on our own schedule.  I can share the information with you if you like.

[fudge]

Thats very thoughtful of you, are we allowed to share e mail addresses on here please?

[makai 7]

I have shared this previously with no problem:

 

Jarat Tours is the company that Regent used for our transfer from the airport to the hotel, and we booked a private car and driver (His name was Kevin and he was fabulous!)  for a tour the day we disembarked the ship - sightseeing in Franschhoek and Stellenbosch, visiting wineries, a chocolatier, etc.  We had a really nice lunch at Glenelly Estate and eventually ended up at the airport in plenty of time for our 6pm-ish flight.

Regent eventually (2 days prior to the end of the cruise) offered an included 'day tour' on a bus that ended up at the airport - but by that time we had already booked the private tour, and we were tired of being on buses with all these same people.  We wanted to do something on our own.

https://www.jarattours.co.za/

https://glenellyestate.com/

https://www.spiceroute.co.za/

 

 

Edited March 14 by makai 7

[fudge]

Thank you so much for that information, this board is just great for this kind of advise.

[PhD-iva]

On 3/13/2024 at 12:23 PM, fudge said:

Thats very thoughtful of you, are we allowed to share e mail addresses on here please?

You are allowed to share your own email address (see mine in my signature). This is a nice way to solicit some private / additional information off-line….

[A Tucson Guy]

On 3/15/2024 at 9:06 PM, PhD-iva said:

You are allowed to share your own email address (see mine in my signature). This is a nice way to solicit some private / additional information off-line….

I do not see your email in your signature. Am I missing something?

[frantic36]

1 hour ago, A Tucson Guy said:

I do not see your email in your signature. Am I missing something?

It's in the second line down in PHD's signature. You just need to take out the spaces and change to @  and .

[PhD-iva]

5 hours ago, A Tucson Guy said:

I do not see your email in your signature. Am I missing something?

All set? I look forward to hearing from you. 

[Lonedaddy]

Can anyone comment about the sea conditions encountered on past SA cruises... waves winds.

[hamasgirl]

Lonedaddy...we did this cruise pre-Covid...in 2018.  The seas were pretty rough for most of the cruise.  In one port, we had started to sail in and as we did that they closed the port so we turned around and headed back out to sea.  The day was spent sailing around in the roiling seas before leaving for our next port.  And we never got to Maputo, Mozambique...again because of rough seas.  

 

This cruise was over Christmas/ New Years so I don't know if this is typical weather for this time of the year or we were just unlucky.  Hope that helps (or maybe not!)

[1982CruzStart]

If memory serves and it has been awhile we had generally pretty good seas on both our cruises to SA. I don't remember any really bad seas on either the east coast of Africa or the west coast. 

Edited April 12 by 1982CruzStart