People love asking about this once they hear the itinerary, so here’s the honest breakdown for two people, two weeks, three legs (Cape Town, Madagascar, and a Kruger-area safari). Numbers are rounded.
The big picture
| Category | Cost (2 people) |
|---|---|
| Flights (Newark to Newark, all legs) | ~$8,000 |
| Lodging | ~$2,375 |
| Hotel gratuities | ~$250 |
| Madagascar tour | ~$1,160 |
| Meals | ~$2,000 |
| Local transport | ~$150 |
| Total | ~$13,935 |
What Madagascar cost on its own
A lot of people ask about Madagascar specifically, so here’s that slice of the trip. We spent four nights there (August 30 to September 3), each at a different hotel, and I booked everything before we arrived.
| Madagascar costs | 2 people |
|---|---|
| Flights: Cape Town → Antananarivo → Johannesburg | ~$1,650 |
| Flights: Antananarivo ↔ Morondava (round trip) | ~$815 |
| Hotels (4 nights, a different one each night) | ~$450 |
| Andasibe tour with MadaRako Tours (round trip from Antananarivo) | $860 |
| Avenue of the Baobabs + mangrove tour (via our hotel) | $300 |
| Total (not counting meals outside the hotel) | ~$4,075 |
What the tours included: the Andasibe tour with MadaRako Tours covered one guide, one driver, and a car for the round trip from Antananarivo, but not lodging or meals. The Baobabs and mangrove tour was arranged through our hotel in Morondava and included meals at the hotel. The room itself ($50 for the night) is counted in the hotel line above.
A note on the flights: Madagascar sits in the middle of our routing, so the Cape Town to Antananarivo to Johannesburg ticket is really one leg of the bigger trip. If you’re flying round trip from South Africa just to see Madagascar, expect a similar ballpark. The domestic flight to Morondava is a big extra on its own, but it’s the only realistic way to reach the Avenue of the Baobabs without a very long drive.
A few honest notes on what’s in here, and what isn’t
- Flights were the single biggest line item, by a wide margin. That’s typical for a multi-country African itinerary with several internal flights (Cape Town to Antananarivo, Antananarivo to Morondava and back, Johannesburg to Hoedspruit), it adds up fast.
- Our Cape Town lodging isn’t in this total, since it was covered through an academic program I was attending. If you’re planning your own trip, a comparable hotel in that area runs roughly $200 a night, so budget around $1,200 for six nights.
- Tomo Safari Lodge (~$1,700 for our stay) includes the game drives, which is standard for safari lodges, the nightly rate usually bundles drives and often meals too, so it looks pricier than a normal hotel night but is doing more work.
- Meals ran roughly $100 to $150 a day for the two of us combined across the whole trip, we didn’t track every meal individually, so this is an estimate, not itemized.
- Not included: the dog boarding we paid for back home, and a separate unrelated trip we’d also booked around the same time. Those aren’t part of what this specific trip cost.
- Local transport ran about $150 total, mostly Ubers in Cape Town, plus roughly $50 in local taxis in Madagascar.
Was it worth it?
Genuinely, yes. This wasn’t a budget trip, and we knew that going in, a private safari lodge and multiple international and regional flights aren’t the cheapest way to see this part of the world. But between the lions walking past our vehicle, sunset at the Avenue of the Baobabs, and lemurs a few feet away in Andasibe, I wouldn’t have cut any of the three legs to save money. If you’re weighing whether a trip like this is worth the cost, my honest answer is that the experience matched the spend.
If you want to do it for less
A few obvious places to trim: feel free to skip the private safari lodge for a mid-range option outside the park (drives are often bookable separately and cheaper), stick to Cape Town and skip the internal flights to Madagascar or Kruger, or extend the trip and slow travel instead of packing three destinations into two weeks, fewer flights usually means more savings than any other single change.