You know the moment. The dates work, the trip looks right, and then you get to the pricing and find the line explaining that the number you were just quoted assumed someone else would be sleeping in the other bed. Traveling alone costs extra. Sharing with a stranger is the discount.
That is presumably the search that brought you here. Think of it: ten days, August 19 to 28, 2027. Four days in Cape Town, five at Thanda Private Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, one to fly home. $7,495, and that figure is single occupancy. Not a shared rate with a penalty added. Your own room at a boutique hotel and your own tent in the bush. Ten women at most, and better than 95% of them booked the way you would, on their own.
What trip is this you might ask? This is South Africa: Cape Town to the Wild. With Women Travel Abroad we’re looking at this special safari itinerary for solo women where the price on the page is the actual price, not something hidden halfway through.
The Cape Town portion
You land at Cape Town International and a private transfer takes you to the hotel. No taxi rank, no negotiating a fare after a long-haul flight. That evening the group eats together for the first time.
Day two is a guided walking tour of the city center: Bo-Kaap, the Company’s Garden, the V&A Waterfront. The afternoon is yours, and it is the only genuinely unstructured block in the Cape Town leg. Lunch on day two is also the one group meal not included, which tells you something useful about how the day is built. It is meant to be spent on your own terms.
Day three goes into the Cape Winelands for tastings at boutique estates. Day four runs the coastal road to Boulders Beach, where the African penguin colony sits on the sand about a metre from the boardwalk, then loops the Cape Peninsula before returning to the city.
A note on timing. August is winter in the Western Cape, which means cool days and real rain. Pack a proper waterproof layer, not a windbreaker. The trade-off is worth it: the same month is deep dry season in KwaZulu-Natal, which is when game viewing is at its best because the bush thins out and animals come to water.
The safari portion
Day five you fly north to KwaZulu-Natal. That domestic flight is included in both directions, which matters more than it sounds like it should, because the alternative is a two-day drive or a separately booked connection that becomes your problem if it slips.
Thanda is a private reserve, and you stay in a tented camp. Five game drives are included across the four nights. Days six and seven follow the same rhythm: out before dawn with a ranger, back for a long middle of the day at the lodge, out again in the late afternoon. Day seven ends with dinner in the bush.
Day eight breaks the pattern. You go to iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a UNESCO site, and take a boat along the St. Lucia Estuary past hippos and Nile crocodiles. Day nine is one last sunrise drive, then the flight back to Cape Town and a farewell dinner near the airport.
Book the private reserve rather than trying to bolt a Kruger day trip onto a Cape Town stay. On a self-arranged Kruger visit you are in a vehicle with strangers on a public road, on someone else’s schedule, once. At Thanda you go out five times with the same ranger, who by the third drive knows what you have not seen yet and goes looking for it.
The rangers are the wildlife experts. Women Travel Abroad does not pretend otherwise. Michelle Alexander, the Travel Host on this departure, is a Senior IT Analyst from Colorado Springs, and her job on the trip is the group and the logistics, not lion behaviour. Those are two different roles and conflating them helps nobody.
WTA women on an unforgettable safari trip
Is it safe to do this alone
The honest version of this answer is that the safety question for a solo woman in South Africa is mostly a question about the gaps between things. Airport to hotel at night. Getting lost in a city centre you do not know. Sitting down to dinner by yourself in a restaurant full of couples.
This itinerary closes those gaps structurally. Arrival transfer is private and prearranged. The city walk is guided. Every dinner except your own choices in your free time is a group dinner.
For the free afternoon on day two, stay in the V&A Waterfront and Company’s Garden area, use a ride-hail app rather than a street taxi, and be back before dark. That is not fear talking, it is the same advice a Capetonian would give you.
The supplement, and why this trip does not have one
Look at the pricing block on the trip page. There is one number on it. Single occupancy, $7,495. There is no double rate underneath it and no supplement line, because the trip was priced for women travelling alone from the start.
This is not a waiver, and it is not a set number of solo spots released early and gone by March. It is how the product is built.
The distinction matters because the cost is the actual barrier, not nerves. JourneyWoman’s “Invisible No More” report, published in March 2025, found that 78% of women over 50 named single supplements as the single biggest thing standing between them and solo travel. Not safety. Not confidence. Price.
Ivana Y, who traveled with Women Travel Abroad to New Zealand in November 2025 and reviewed the trip on TripAdvisor, put the payoff plainly. The trips, she wrote, keep the introvert in mind with single occupancy and free days. Those two things are the same design decision.
Whether it suits you physically
The trip carries a Level 3 moderate rating. In practice that means walking tours of two to three miles at a steady pace, moderate inclines, multiple flights of stairs, and stretches of up to two hours on your feet with few breaks. Cape Town is a hilly city and the Bo-Kaap streets are steep.
Trips are open to any woman over 18. The average traveler is 55. The youngest to date was 20 and the oldest was 81.
What happens before you leave
90 days before departure, your group gets on a video call together. Just your group, not a general webinar. You meet your Travel Host, Michelle, you cover flights and visas, and you find out who else is coming.
At 60 days you get the packing list and a video on doing the whole thing carry-on only. For this trip that list earns its keep, because you are packing for Cape Town rain and bush mornings in the same bag.
At 35 days you are added to a private WhatsApp group along with the free-time options. This is where the day two afternoon gets sorted out. By the time you land, two or three women have already agreed to go to the Zeitz Museum together and you are one of them.
WTA women on a river safari spotting hippos.
Booking
A $400 deposit holds your spot and is non-refundable. After that, $400 a month minimum until the trip is paid off, with the balance due 90 days before departure.
Register for the August 2027 South Africa departure here. If the dates do not work, the 2027 departures are listed here and everything on the calendar is here.
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