RSD Travel
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Trip to South Africa .
I would like to leave a review in relation to our recent trip to South Africa advertised for £ 999.00 which essentially seemed like a bargain if you start adding up all of the flights and accommodation costs for 10 days as advertised by RSD. I have to say we have travelled with RSD twice before and felt we knew what to expect. Well how wrong we were... So where should I start ? After 26 hours of traveling time arrived at Cape Town midday ready for a good shower and some rest. However we had another thing coming when after being greeted at the airport by a friendly guide (positive thing) we were told we will be going straight to the Table Mountain for 30 minutes experience which was planned for the following day and then to the Natural history museum where we could spend another 30 minutes at our leisure. Having said this I have to give our guide a credit as if we did not visit the Table Mountain then we would not have another opportunity to do so as the access to the mountain is normally weather permitting. At the same time while taking into account that 95% of the group consisted of elderly people to design the trip without taking into account how long it took the traveling took was just abominable. Trip to the museum ended up lasting only 25 minutes and in fairness could have been excluded all together. We have Natural history museums in most major cities in the UK hence to include this activity felt like badly thought through activity. After finishing in the museum we were taken into our first hotel where we just about had time to get change (about an hour) , freshen up in order to be taken for dinner at the Waterfront. By the time we got to the Waterfront we had no time to time to enjoy the sites. We were ushered into a restorant where a choice of food was limited to two main courses and two deserts which was prepaid through dinner package offered by RSD. I would say some people thought this was not enough and ended up ordering extra food. Our group decided to ask if we could spend 30 minutes at the waterfront after dinner which was agreed fortunately however if we did not we would not have another opportunity to visit this site. We left our hotel 8am the following day to take the Garden route to Knysna. The route suppose to be one of the beautiful routes to take...let me be honest we saw some rapeseed fields and wind turbines which were sold to us as a novelty. We could have been driving thorough Yorkshire country side for all we knew. The journey took over 8 hours with two stops. It was not the most unpleasant but after already traveled for over a day to get to Cape Town again we felt this was poorly planned. When we arrived at the hotel we had literally two minutes to get a shower (if one was lucky) and then go straight for dinner which I have to say was nice. Despite this we felt we were rushed a lot and were being treated like cattle. Another example on the way to Pretoria we stopped at Azula station where we did not have time to have lunch and were told we can eat on the bus. We could go on but frankly I am happy to forget all the negatives and concentrate on our next trip NOT we RSD. We do not blame the guides as we understand they do not design the itenaries. They tried very hard to passify unhappy customers under difficult circumstances and there were small percentage of people who did not mind the pace though were still unhappy with some of the trip's aspects. Do not get me wrong there were some pretty good highlights to the trip too like whale watching trip but to the true nature of RSD they were Optional extras which were not advertised by the way !!! On the travel vouchers of the documents we received it states " RSD Travel wishes you a relaxing time and a wonderful trip" I can say with 100 % certainty relaxing time we did not have and RSD made sure of it. Needless to say we will never ever travel with RSD again and also would not recommend it to anyone. Mr and Mrs Howitt