South Africa · Southern Africa
Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula.
Cape Town is the city most itineraries are anchored to, and the Peninsula gives it a coastline, a mountain and a wine region within an hour of the centre.
Photo Joshua Kettle / Unsplash
The city sits between Table Mountain and two oceans, which is the practical reason it absorbs more days than visitors expect. The mountain, the Waterfront, the Bo-Kaap and the beaches at Camps Bay and Clifton are all within the city; Cape Point, Boulders Beach and Chapman's Peak Drive are a day's loop from it.
Weather is the planning constraint rather than the season for wildlife: the Cape is a winter-rainfall region, so its best months are the southern summer, which is precisely when the safari areas to the north are at their greenest and wettest.
What is here
Journeys through South Africa
Elsewhere in South Africa
- Greater Kruger and the LowveldThe Greater Kruger is South Africa's principal safari region: the national park itself plus a belt of private reserves sharing unfenced boundaries with it.
- The Cape WinelandsStellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl form the classic winelands triangle, about an hour inland from Cape Town.
- The Garden RouteThe Garden Route runs roughly from Mossel Bay to Storms River along the southern coast, and is the country's classic self-drive stretch.
- KwaZulu-Natal and ZululandKwaZulu-Natal combines a warm coastline, the Drakensberg mountains and Big Five reserves that are malaria-free or low-risk.
- The Eastern CapeThe Eastern Cape's private reserves are malaria-free and sit within reach of the Garden Route, which is why they so often close a family itinerary.
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