Unlike Switzerland (my home country), South Africa is still quite an affordable travel destination. If you’re planning a trip there and curious about how much money you need for 1 week in South Africa, keep reading to find out!
GENERAL COMMENTS
COSTS DISPLAYED IN THIS POST ARE IN CHF
Even though the national currency in South Africa is the Rand, the expenses outlined in this post are in CHF. For context, since I am Swiss, this is the easiest currency for me to calculate. However, lucky for me (and you) the Swiss Franc is basically on par with the USD and the Euro. This means, if your currency of reference is any of these three you can just take the numbers as they are without converting them!
YOU WILL NEED CASH
Unlike many other destinations I have already written about on my blog (check them out here), South Africa is still a country where carrying some cash with you is a must. Personally, we needed cash for tipping various tour guides and hotel staff, as well as paying for certain tours, meals and fuel in and around the Kruger National Park.
In Cape Town, especially in the touristy areas, you will be totally fine with using your credit card. To minimize any transaction and exchange rate fees, I usually use Revolut – check it out, I can highly recommend this card for traveling!
TRIP FOR TWO
I was travelling with my boyfriend on this trip. I like to mention this because for some trips your costs might be lower/higher if you are traveling in a group (e.g. shared ubers, shared rental car costs, etc…). For South Africa I personally do believe that you can save if you travel with several people, since you will be taking lots of Ubers, and potentially also renting a car. These are all expenses that are significantly reduced if shared with other people…
9 DAYS 8 NIGHTS
We arrived on Saturday afternoon in Cape Town and left late in the evening the following Sunday. Hence, the cost of our trip reflect almost 9 full days and eight nights.
TRAVEL STYLE
When talking about how much money you need, it is obviously important to consider the travel style. Usually, I would describe our travel style as budget aware. However, I guess we kind of “splurged” a little (in our opinion), and we really chose comfort and safety over other things on this trip. This means, that we stayed in hotels in nicer areas, and usually ate out for all our meals, mainly in the touristy areas, and we chose a nice car. Usually, we would just opt for the cheapest option in each category, which is not what we did this time.
THIS IS HOW MUCH MONEY YOU WILL NEED
Overall, we spent 1’436 CHF per person. This does not include the cost of our flights to and from South Africa, as well as any additional shopping we did.
Per day, this averages out to approx. 160 CHF. If you exclude the domestic flights, it would be 146 CHF per person per day. See the table below for a more detailed cost breakdown per expense category.
| Category | Total cost | Average/day | % of total cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hotel | 594 | 74 | 38% |
| Transport | 237 | 26 | 15% |
| Food & drinks | 156 | 17 | 10% |
| Activities | 235 | 29 | 15% |
| Domestic flights | 333 | 21% | |
| Total | 1’436 |
HOTELs
During our trip in total we stayed at three different hotels.
The first one was in Cape Town. There we stayed at Signature Lux Hotel by ONOMO Waterfront. The location was very nice since it was very close to the V&A Waterfront, and in general close to all the tourist attractions. We paid a total of 134 CHF, which is 34 CHF per person per night. A good breakfast was included in this price, which was nice!
Next, we stayed at Crocodile Bridge Safari Lodge just outside of the Crocodile Bridge Gate of the Kruger National Park. Here we paid a total of 222 CHF, which is 74 CHF per person per night. In this price included are breakfast AND a very good dinner. Alcoholic beverages are not included.
Lastly, we spent one night at the Kruger Gate Hotel, located just outside the Paul Kruger Gate at the Kruger National Park. Here we paid a total of 120 CHF per person for the one night we stayed here. In this price included once again are breakfast and dinner. Alcoholic beverages are not included.
All hotels were very nice and at great locations. I would highly recommend all of them!!
ACTIVITIES
As always, activities are something that we don’t want to miss out on, since this is our personal reason for travelling!
Overall, we spent 235 CHF on activities, which averages out to 29 CHF per day per person.
The main things we spent money on include:
- Bush Walk: 80 CHF incl. tips. We booked our walk with Irving Knight Safaris, he was such an awesome guide! I can highly recommend. The tour lasted like 9 hours, for that it’s a really good price. The entrance into the park is paid separately.
- Kruger Park Entrances: 64 CHF for 3 days. If you are a South African citizen, this will be less.
- Cape Peninsula Tour: 41 CHF. This was supposed to be a full day tour to the Cape Peninsula starting in Cape Town. However, we got a little unlucky with our tour and the guide decided to rush through every experience and get us back to Cape Town around 2pm. Hence I will not be linking our tour.
- Night Safari: 20 CHF. If you’re looking for another different Safari experience, maybe a Night Safari could be for you! It’s nice because you really have the park to yourself in the evening.
- Cape Town Hop On Hop Off Bus Tour: 13 CHF. This is SUCH a touristy thing to do, but we really enjoyed it. Cape Town is quite big so this is a nice way to get around and learn a little more about the local history and traditions.
FOOD
Food is of course a major expense of any trip, especially if you are eating out for most meals. Luckily, breakfast was included in all of our hotels, and for half of our trip even dinner was included in our hotel. Nevertheless, I tried to split the remaining food expenses that we had into the respective categories below.
| Meal type | total | average |
|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | 5 | 5 |
| Lunch | 28 | 14 |
| Dinner | 52 | 17 |
| Coffee | 14 | 3 |
| Snacks | 0 | 2 |
| Drinks | 16 | 4 |
| Total | 115 | 13 / Day |
As you can see, the majority of the categories is quite affordable. Especially compared to Western European city prices.
Our dinners were by far the mos expensive meal category, because we usually ate in quite nice and touristy areas in Cape Town. The meals also usually included a glass of wine or a drink.
Nevertheless, overall food was quite affordable. For 9 days, we only spent 115 CHF on food, which averages out to approx. 13 CHF per day, including alcoholic beverages. I could only dream about prices like these here in Switzerland!!
TRANSPORT
South Africa is not a very walkable country. Hence, Ubers and rental cars are your best bet. We spent a total of 240 CHF on transportation, which averages out to approx. 30 CHF per person per day.
The main expenses in this category are:
- Rent a car: 204 CHF per person. We had a large and very new car, but not an SUV.
- Ubers: 13 CHF per person. These are all rides within Cape Town, as well as to and from the airport in Cape Town.
- Fuel: 20 CHF per person. This was after driving around in the Kruger National Park for pretty much 3 days straight, for that it was honestly not that bad.
domestic flights
Since we only had a week in South Africa, and distances really are huge, we had to take several domestic flights to make our itinerary work. Our international flight arrived in Johannesburg, which meant that we had to first take a domestic flight to Cape Town. From there, we flew to Nelspruit (Mpumalanga International Airport), and then obviously back to Johannesburg for our return flight home.
Overall, these three domestic legs cost us 333 CHF. We flew with FlySafair and Airlink. FlySafair seems to be a budget airline, the flight was ok but nothing exceptional. Our experience with Airlink on the other hand was great, we loved the service on board!
HIGHEST INDIVIDUAL COSTS
Let’s break down my top three highest single costs:
- Flights: If you have more time on hand, I guess you could drive in between destinations. However, this was not the case with us, which is why we flew from Johannesburg to Cape Town, from there to Mpumalanga (Nelspruit), and then back to Johannesburg. We booked quite last minute, which makes me think maybe we paid a little more than what was necessary. All these flights cost us 333 CHF per person. The airlines we used are FlySafair and Airlink, we were happy with both.
- Rent a car: As already mentioned, we got a large car, but not a SUV. This cost us 204 CHF per person for a 4 day rental period. We booked with Europcar, but I would not recommend them!!! I’ve heard good things about Bluu car rental though, which is a local company.
- Crocodile Bridge Safari Lodge: We loooooved this lodge! It’s right by the Crocodile Bridge park entrance, and the price includes breakfast and dinner. We paid 222 CHF for a 3 night stay.
CAN I ALSO VISIT SOUTH AFRICA FOR CHEAPER?
OH FOR SURE!! There are several things you could do to bring your budget down.
First of all, there are more affordable accommodation options out there. All of our stays were in hotels, in pretty good locations. In Cape Town we stayed at V&A Waterfront, one of the most expensive areas, and in the Kruger area we stayed at two lodges. Not the most luxurious ones, but still lodges. There are definitely other, more affordable options out there. With B&B’s or apartments. However, I would definitely check whether the neighborhood is safe before booking anything. Safety first, always!
The second category that can have a big impact on the budget is food. Instead of eating out at the touristy places like V&A Waterfront, you could try to eat more local or cook yourself. This would significantly bring down your budget as well.
Lastly, we had a medium to large rental car. There were several smaller cars that you can choose, which were SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper. However, I do want to point out that for Safari a more elevated car is better, but if you are on a strict budget then definitely any car would do.
FINAL REMARKS
To conclude, if you want to be comfortable, safe and not miss out on any experiences, you’ll probably be spending around 1.5k CHF per person for a week in South Africa. Looking back, it does seem high, but it’s pretty much what we expected. While it is definitely not cheap, you do really get great service and value for your money in South Africa.
As mentioned before, the 1.5k is a rough guideline of what a week could look like as a comfortable traveler. You can definitely do the week for much less, but you could also do the week for much much much more!
P.S. For cost breakdowns of other destinations around the world check out this page here.