Dear Katie,

First of all, congratulations! And of course I’ll be delighted to help you arrange your honeymoon in Africa!

What we need to decide first is whether you prefer to travel to East Africa or southern Africa. The two places are almost a half-continent apart and are much different. Both have access to excellent beaches on the Indian Ocean (Zanzibar and Mombasa in East Africa; and Mozambique in southern Africa) so making this decision is more a function of your bush experience than your romantic ending. Although let me know for this romantic ending whether you prefer a small, exclusive and possibly remote beach, or a more gregarious resort that might have evening music, for instance, or one that might be located near an interesting town.

East Africa is much wilder and that also means overall better game viewing. As a typical benchmark, ten days on safari in East Africa will likely encounter around 50-60 lion. The same period of time in southern Africa will see only 6-10. And this difference translates right down the line of almost all kinds of animals, and especially with the large herds of herbivores. August is the time that great migration is beginning in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, where you would have the opportunity of seeing tens of thousands of wildebeest.

You might then, wonder, why I just don’t immediately recommend East Africa! The reason is that after game viewing, there really is nothing else as a significant attraction in East Africa. In southern Africa, there are great cities like Cape Town, other natural attractions like Victoria Falls, wine country, lots of opportunities for out-of-vehicle experiences like great hikes, and wonderful historical touring. None of these extra attractions are significant in East Africa.

And an important consideration for August: East Africa lies astride the equator, so both the amount of daylight and temperatures don’t vary that much over the year. But in southern Africa, August will be late winter. Your game viewing will occur in an area that is about as far south of the equator as central Mexico is north of the equator, so for a sense of season think of Guadalajara (inland game viewing) or Acapulco (on the beach) in March. There is about 10 hours of daylight and 14 hours of night, and inland it can reach freezing in the morning. The leaves are all down; trees and other shrubbery has not yet begun to bud.

Southern Africa is much more like California than the Congo, and what this means is that overall style is better. Please don’t misinterpret me at this point: I would not suggest any place for you to stay in East Africa which wasn’t wonderful and attractive and very, very comfortable. But East Africa doesn’t have the Canyon Lodges and Peter Islands or Peninsula Hotel resorts, and southern Africa does. In the bush, some of the “camps” found in southern Africa are extraordinarily spectacular, fabulously luxurious. That extraordinary level of luxury is not yet found in East Africa.

And this leads me to budget. I don’t yet need to know that, since I will propose alternate places for you to stay with links that you can peruse yourself, linked to various budgets. But in general, southern Africa is much more expensive than East Africa. Most honeymoons that I’ve arranged in East Africa last year for around two weeks were in the range of $6000 – $8000 per person. In southern Africa, they were $10000 – $13000.