If you are planning to fly you don't necessarily have to use a travel agent. Saying that you can get great package deals, so don't exclude travel agents completely.

However, if you just want to book a flight on a local (South African) or foreign flight an excellent website to use is Travelstart's. Type in your place of departure and your destination, your departure and return (or one-way) dates, whether you will consider stop-overs, and finally select the details of the people travelling. The site then searches for all the available flights, which is sorted from cheapest to most expensive. You can then adjust the dates by plus or minus a day to see if it affects the price - often it does! Public holidays, time of day, destination, high and low season, weekends - all these affect the price.

Once you finalise everything you can then add on insurance, book a car or accommodation - really amazing.