I just got back from four weeks in Africa, and I thought I'd share some highlights.
I went with an opposite-sex friend. We booked our safari with Wilderness. I can't even begin to rave adequately about them. The entire thing was a dream.
We flew Visa Aerobus from Guadalajara to Mexico City, and then Turkish Airlines to Istanbul and on to Cape Town. We booked four nights at the Dolphin Inn. Lovely place, great location. However, I thought I booked a room with two beds, and that's not what we got, so we ended up having to book a second room. They gave us one night free in the second room. I checked my booking confirmation email, and it didn't specify what room I'd booked, so I can't say for sure if the error was mine or theirs. So if you book there (and it's great, so you should), confirm with them which room you booked.
We did the Hop On Hop Off bus, which was really great. And we took a private tour to the Cape of Good Hope, which was also great. We did the free historical walking tour, which we enjoyed a lot. And we did a winery tour, which was enjoyable.
We booked our own flight to Maun, Botswana, and from there, everything was handled by Wilderness. We had three nights in each of three different camps. Two of the camps were upgrades we didn't have to pay for, because the original camps we booked at were undergoing maintenance. All three camps were fabulous; the staff, the food, the lodging, the facilities, and the wildlife excursions far exceeded my expectations. We stayed at Qorokwe first, then Pelo, and finally Duma Tau. We flew in small planes to airstrips near each camp.
After nine nights in Botswana, we flew to Kasane, where we were picked up and driven to the Zimbabwe border. Then we continued on to Victoria Falls. We spent two nights there at the Palm River Hotel. We had a sunset cruise on the Zambezi River the first evening, and a tour of the falls the next morning. After that we had plenty of free time to explore and go shopping in the town, and we got tickets that night to a show called Simunye, which was really good.
The next day we were driven across the border to Zambia and on to the airport in Livingstone. We flew to Lusaka (capital of Zambia), and Wilderness got us a day-use room at the Marriott Ciela Resort for our six-hour layover before heading on to Kigali, Rwanda. Unfortunately, our flight on RwandAir to Kigali was canceled, so we rushed back to the airport and were able to book a flight to Johannesburg and from there to Kigali, arriving at 7am the next morning instead of 9:30pm that night. Fortunately, that didn't mess up our plans, though we were operating on little sleep the next day.