South Africa - The Miracles Tour 2024

Depart New York for your overnight flight to Johannesburg.

Date: March 11, 2024

New York to Johannesburg

• Flight #: DL 2169
• Depart: New York (JFK) at 12:59 PM
• Arrive: Atlanta (ATL) at 1:33 PM

Layover in Atlanta

• Date: March 11, 2024
• Flight #: DL 200
• Depart: Atlanta (ATL) at 5:45 PM
• Arrive: Johannesburg (JNB) at 3:05 PM+1

Arrive in Johannesburg, South Africa!  After completing airport formalities, you will be met at the airport by your tour guide and driver and transferred to your hotel. Check into the hotel and enjoy the rest of the day at leisure.  This evening, you’ll enjoy a Welcome Dinner at the hotel with your fellow travelers.

Hotel: Thaba Eco Lodge
Meals: Dinner

You have an early flight this morning from Johannesburg to East London. Upon arrival at East London, you’ll meet your guide for the next few days, who’ll drive you to King Williams town where you’ll start your first tour. King William's Town is the birthplace and resting place of the great Steven Biko. Biko founded the Black Consciousness Movement, around the time that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were at the peak of their activities in the USA. Similarly, to other iconic black leaders of his time, the BCM was not a racial movement, seeing all races as equal, but that some races set out to oppress others.

Biko's most famous work, 'I Write What I Like', a collection of his writing and interviews with him was only published after his death at the hands of the apartheid regime (who saw him as extremely dangerous). You'll visit the splendid legacy building built to Biko's memory in the center of King William's Town, as well the memorial built to him and visit some of the important sites of struggle in the area, which would have shaped Biko's thinking at the time.

After your informative morning you’ll have lunch at one of King Williams Town's local success stories, Man Buy and Braai.

If you ask any South African, of any race or class or creed, what they really, really like to do on a weekend you will only get one answer. Braai. A braai is a seriously important part of South African national culture and our myriad sub cultures. It’s translated as ‘barbeque’ in English but that’s not coming close to the meaning. It means much more here than simply grilling meat (or vegetables) outside. If you are invited to someone's house for a braai, this is a big sign of social acceptance, a little like being invited to Diwali or Thanksgiving in other cultures. You never turn down a braai invitation. Likewise, if you're invited to a public braai (these are called shisha nyamas), particularly if you're a visitor to South Africa, that is a huge sign of social acceptance.

After lunch, you’ll head onto another highlight, the AfroChild and Craft Collection. Here you'll have your first chance to shop for local crafts and fashion, all lovingly handmade right here in the Eastern Cape by professional designers.

The final leg of your travels today takes you to your lodgings for the next two nights at the wonderful Prana Lodge.  Enjoy dinner at your hotel this evening.

Hotel: Prana Lodge
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

After a restful night’s sleep, you are off to a living Cultural Village where you will experience and learn about Xhosa Culture and traditions. You will drive one hour inland to the rural village of Kwetyana. You’ll spend the morning immersed in this rural community’s day to day routine. You’ll also enjoy lunch cooked by a local family, giving you a true glimpse of traditional day to day life of the people of the Eastern Cape.

Upon returning to the Lodge you have a free afternoon to enjoy some of the activities on offer, these include bush walks, birding or just relaxing by the pool. You will have dinner again at the hotel this evening.

Hotel: Prana Lodge
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

You'll say farewell to the endless Indian Ocean views this morning and travel inland. For your next two days, you’ll spend time experiencing the miracle of conservation that is Greater Addo National Park. Originally known as Addo Elephant Park, it's soon going to be what is known in conservation circles as a 'mega-park', rivalling in size and scope such global wonders at Kruger and the Serengeti. When completed, it will stretch across 3600 square km, including a mountain, bush, forest, dune, beach and marine section. It is planned that it will be the only park in Africa where the Big Seven can be seen in one park (being lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo, giraffe, Great White Shark and Southern Right Whale). To visit Addo requires the help of experienced rangers as it's so vast, so with this in mind we've used the services of The Elephant House and also the private reserve of Schotia nearby. You will enjoy a packed lunch on arrival today before an afternoon game drive.

Return to Elephant House after your game drive to relax for a bit. This evening. You’ll enjoy a lovely dinner at the Elephant House.

Hotel: Elephant House
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Today you’ll have the opportunity to experience two different safari game drives. In the morning, you will head back to Addo to witness the amazing population of elephants in their natural habitat.

You’ll return to Elephant House for a leisurely lunch.

Later in the afternoon, you’ll head to Schotia Safari Private Game Reserve.  You’ll have an exciting evening game drive as you watch the sunset in the African Bush.

Look forward to dinner served at the Lapa surrounded by the sounds of the bush.  At  the  lapa, you will enjyou a  delicious  dinner  which  is  prepared lovingly over an open fire and listen to tales of the bush told by your guides and rangers.

After dinner you will be transferred back to your lodgings at the Elephant House.

Hotel: Elephant House
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Enjoy a slower morning and a relaxing breakfast today after your adventures in the bush last night. You'll leave the Elephant House this morning. The drive will take you two hours east, along the Sunshine Coast to your next destination, Oceana Beach & Wildlife Reserve. On arrival you will have lunch, then a couple of hours to wander through this pristine nature reserve or rest before enjoying a Gin Tasting followed by dinner.

During your two-night stay at your luxury accommodations, you’ll have a chance to relax and let the African air permeate through your soul. Here, you can do so many things or nothing at all. You can enjoy morning and afternoon game drives, beach picnics, and bush walks. Why not also make use of the spa or just marvel at the clear view of the ocean waves breaking from the Africa shaped rock pool, situated at the lodge.

Hotel: Oceana Beach & Wildlife Reserve
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

This morning you will leave Oceana and head to Gqeberha airport for an early flight to Johannesburg. The drive to the airport will take approximately two hours.

Upon arrival in Joburg, you’ll be met and driven back to Thaba Eco Hotel, arriving around lunch time. After lunch you have the afternoon free to spend at leisure, maybe go on an eco-drive or spend a couple of hours at the spa.

If you still need to do some retail therapy, join the 1:00 pm shopping trip to Johannesburg’s retail hotspot of Sandton.

This evening, you will have dinner in SOWETO at Cafe Bohemia.

Hotel: Thaba Eco Hotel
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the museum celebrates the largest ever find of early hominid remains at the nearby Sterkfontein Caves, with excavations and discoveries stretching back over 130 years at the same site, with more still being discovered. The tour starts at 09h00 with your private guide, a paleoanthropologist. During the visit, you’ll learn how the now commonly held assumption that “mankind began in Africa” is only a relatively recently demonstrable fact. Whilst some of the hominid remains discovered in the area are many millions of years old (“Mrs. Ples” is estimated to be at least 2 million years old), the same site has also revealed other hominids of between 200 and 300 thousand years old, placing them contemporaneously with homo sapiens. So much of the site is still unknown, but one thing we do know for sure is that the site held massive and enduring significance over millions of years for hominids. As such, a visit to the Cradle of Humankind really is a return to the source, to where all humans began.

Return back to your hotel for lunch.  Afterwards, head to the Apartheid Museum. The Apartheid Museum is designed to challenge your own assumptions about race and power. Upon exiting, you are left to ponder the process of restitution and recourse.

This evening you will enjoy a wonderful Farewell Dinner with your travel companions.

Hotel: Thaba Eco Hotel
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

The tour you will enjoy today is a refreshingly contemporary and futuristic take on one of South Africa’s most famous suburbs, designed to provide a sense of how Soweto has and is helping to shape the future of Johannesburg.

‘Soweto’, which stands for ‘SOuthern WEstern TOwnships’, was created in the 1950s as a transitory place of habitation for Black South Africans who were ‘lucky’ enough to have work in Johannesburg, serving the white elite or working in the mines. It was never intended to be a place of permanent occupation: the apartheid-era government wanted Blacks to ‘live’ in the deeply rural areas of the Eastern Cape where there was little or no work and to ‘work’ in the cities for the white elites. The idea was the Black people would sleep in Soweto, work for whites during the week, and go ‘home’ to their families in the homelands, over 1000 miles away, at the weekends and over holidays. Of course, this never worked in practice and the millions of migrant workers who came to Johannesburg ended up bringing their families with them, illegally, to live in the city. The area became vastly overpopulated and the government deliberately invested nothing into the infrastructure—and as such, the township became a hotbed for rebellion against the state.

Soweto became the place to be in South Africa in the late 1970s. Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Steven Biko and Mahatma Gandhi all called Soweto home at one time or another.

After your highlights tour you will walk from the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum which was established to commemorate the Soweto Uprising on 1976 and on to Soweto’s most famous street, Vilakazi Street.

You’ll enjoy lunch at Sakhumzi Restaurant on Vilakazi Street.

After lunch, you’ll return to your hotel to pick up your bags and transfer to the airport for your overnight flight back to the US.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch

Flight Information

Date: March 21, 2024

Johannesburg to New York

• Flight #: AF 995
• Depart: Johannesburg (JNB) at 7:50 PM 
• Arrive: Paris (CDG) at 5:50 AM+1

Layover in Paris

• Date: March 22, 2024
• Flight #: AF 002
• Depart: Paris (CDG) at 8:30 AM 
• Arrive: New York City (JFK) at 11:40 AM

WELCOME HOME!

Full Package Price

• $5,999 per person (double occupancy)
• $7,099 per person (single occupancy)

Land Only Package 
(international flights and transfers NOT included)

• $4,899 per person (double occupancy)
• $5,999 per person (single occupancy)

Note: In the Land Only package you will make your own flight arrangements and transportation to/from the hotel upon arrival and departure. Overton Travel can assist you with these arrangements upon request.

Payment Schedule

• Deposit: Due at the time of booking:  $300 (Non-Refundable)
• Installment #1: June 30, 2023: $900
• Installment #2: July 31, 2023: $900
• Installment #3: August 31, 2023: $900
• Installment #4: September 30, 2023: $900
• Installment #5: October 31, 2023: $900
• Installment #6: November 30, 2023: $900
• Installment #7 - Final Payment: December 31, 2023 - Remaining Balance

Date: March 11, 2024

New York to Johannesburg

• Flight #: DL 2169
• Depart: New York (JFK) at 12:59 PM
• Arrive: Atlanta (ATL) at 1:33 PM

Layover in Atlanta

• Date: March 11, 2024
• Flight #: DL 200
• Depart: Atlanta (ATL) at 5:45 PM
• Arrive: Johannesburg (JNB) at 3:05 PM+1

Date: March 21, 2024

Johannesburg to New York

• Flight #: AF 995
• Depart: Johannesburg (JNB) at 7:50 PM 
• Arrive: Paris (CDG) at 5:50 AM+1

Layover in Paris

• Date: March 22, 2024
• Flight #: AF 002
• Depart: Paris (CDG) at 8:30 AM 
• Arrive: New York City (JFK) at 11:40 AM

All seats are in Economy Class.

Please contact Overton Travel at the time of booking if you would like to upgrade your seat.

Upgrades to Business Class seats can be done, based on availability at the time of booking.

Specific seats on the flight cannot be guaranteed.

Seats are assigned by the airlines for group bookings. If you would like a specific seat, you can:

1. Book your flights individually with the airline. Do not book the group flights as part of the Full Package.  OR
2. Contact the airline directly after you receive your travel document to request a specific seat. Also note, that some airlines do not assign seats in advance for group bookings, and seats will be assigned at the airport upon check-in.

We encourage all travelers to purchase a travel protection plan at the time of initial trip deposit. 

Overton Travel uses Travel Insured International. Click here to review and purchase a travel protection plan from them: Travel Protection.

You can purchase travel protection through the supplier used by Overton Travel or any other supplier you choose.

Spend time at a local village where you will experience and learn about Xhosa culture and traditions. You’ll spend the morning immersed in this rural community’s day to day routine. You’ll also enjoy lunch cooked by a local family, giving you a true glimpse of traditional day to day life of the people of the Eastern Cape.

Witness the largest ever discovery of hominid remains in the world, guided by one of the archaeologists that found them.