Car hire excess insurance that includes safaris?

[TravelsWithMyHP]

Hi all, hoping someone can offer some advice here.
Thanks to the tips and tricks on this site we’ve managed to bag ourselves a couple of F returns to JNB in September. We’ll be hiring a car from Hertz and visiting a couple of national parks (Kruger and Pilanesberg). The usual CDW Excess insurer we use (Questor) won’t cover safaris (I checked with them what their definition of safari actually is and they confirmed that our plans would not be covered). I’m struggling to find an excess insurer that will cover safaris so was wondering if anybody had any advice on a company/policy worth looking at? Thanks.

[JDB]

@TravelsWithMyHP – have you asked Hertz what the cost would be so as at least to have a reference point? Many policies will exclude safaris either directly or by excluding off-road driving which is likely to be involved so it falls in the too difficult to model risk box. As driving in SA (and similarly Australia and Argentina) often involves driving on dirt roads, you may find that Hertz is more competitive than you think or alternatively a local insurance provider that’s more familiar with the risk but of course that won’t have your usual UK product protections.

[LD27]

Suggest you look at Avis. When we went to South Africa about 2 years ago, we booked a BAH including Avis car rental. If I recall correctly, there was a special Safari insurance. I seem to recall the terms and conditions were different for 4wd vehicles, so might have included driving on unpaved roads.

[TravelsWithMyHP]

Thanks @LD27, the Avis T&C’s seem fairly unambiguous:

Unpaved Roads
Avis cars are not to be driven on unpaved roads (like gravel, dirt, etc).

Couldn’t find anything else int he T&C’s to the contrary (I guess it’s possible that the local station might offer something that’s not visible online). Regardless, the actual hire cost is much higher than Hertz no matter which channel I try.

[TravelsWithMyHP]

@JDB, yes, I have an approximate cost from Hertz which comes to almost 50% of the actual rental cost for 17 days! That will be my option of last resort (assuming it actually covers driving in the NP’s which will probably need a phone call to confirm as I can’t find a definitive answer online!).

[yonasl]

In Kruger you are going around paved roads. You will never be allowed to go off road (and should not) with a normal rental car. You don’t need special insurance, just stick to paved roads (btw, plenty of roads are unpaved in ZA but still considered “roads”. The T&C usually mean don’t take your car into proper 4×4 tracks or literally into the wilderness).

[Sobeboy15]

We have recently returned from Namibia where we hired a car through Holiday Autos and the provider was Hertz. We drove 4,500 km the majority of which were on gravel roads.

We took Holiday Autos additional insurance as it worked out cheaper hiring the car that way than directly with Hertz including the insurance.

We had a puncture on our first day, which we had to get sorted out and I have just received the money back from the insurance company, no questions asked. To say we put the Rav 4 through its paces would be an unerstatement, I have never had such a dirty car all they asked us to do was keep the inside clean which we cleaned it on our last day. I was expecting all sort of issues but nothing so was more than pleased.