SOUTH AFRICA · CAPE TO KRUGER
Table Mountain, the Big Five, two oceans.
From Cape Town and the Winelands to the Garden Route coast and the bushveld up north. The tours worth booking across South Africa, and how to build your days around them.
Only in South Africa
Three things you can only do at the tip of Africa.
Beaches, boat trips and mountain views turn up the world over. A colony of African penguins you can swim beside, a steel cage among great white sharks, and a cable car onto a flat-topped mountain over the city do not. Start the trip with these three.
On the sand
Penguins at Boulders Beach
A colony of African penguins lives on a sheltered cove at Simon's Town, and a boardwalk takes you in among them. The species is found nowhere but the southern African coast, and Boulders is the one beach where you can swim in the same warm granite pools while they waddle past on the sand. An easy, slightly surreal morning south of Cape Town.
- 1 Cape Town: Cape of Good Hope & Penguins Day Tour with Pickup
- 2 Cape Point and Boulder’s Penguins Full Day Tour
- 3 From Cape Town: Cape Point & Boulders Beach Full-Day Tour
Cage down
Great Whites off Gansbaai
Two hours east of Cape Town, the channel between Dyer Island and Geyser Rock holds so many great white sharks it is known as Shark Alley. You drop into a steel cage at the surface and watch the ocean's most famous predator glide past at arm's length. Few stretches of coast on earth put you eye to eye with a great white like this one.
- 1 From Hermanus or Cape Town: Shark Cage Diving Experience
- 2 Shark Cage Diving and Viewing with transport from Cape Town
- 3 Cape Town: Gansbaai Eco-Friendly Shark Cage Diving Cruise
Above the city
The Top of Table Mountain
A flat-topped mountain over a kilometre high rises straight out of Cape Town, and a cable car turns full circle as it carries you to the summit. Up top: the whole peninsula laid out, an ocean on either side, and rock dassies on the paths. One of the New7Wonders of Nature, with the Mother City spread out at its feet.
- 1 Zipline Cape Town – From Foot of Table Mountain Reserve
- 2 Cape Town: Table Mountain Cable Car, Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour
- 3 Table Mountain, Penguins & Cape Point Small Group Tour Cape Town
Start here
The easiest yes in the country.
One day, one easy decision. The experience most first-time visitors put at the top of the list, and a good way to find your feet.
The classics
South Africa's Most Popular Tours
Table Mountain and the Cape Peninsula, the Winelands, the Big Five and the whale coast. The days that fill most South Africa itineraries.
The tip of the Cape
Where two oceans meet.
At the bottom of the Cape Peninsula the continent runs out to a point, the cold Atlantic on one side and the warmer Indian Ocean on the other. Stand at the Cape Point lighthouse, look for whales offshore, and drive Chapman’s Peak back along the cliffs into the city.
Explore the Cape Peninsula →Where to base
Cape Town is your basecamp.
Most first trips run from the Mother City. The big days out fan from Cape Town in three directions, and none of them is more than a couple of hours from your hotel.
By region
Pick a corner of South Africa.
Cape Town for the mountain and the sea. The Peninsula for the penguins. The Winelands for the long lunch. Safari country for the Big Five. The Garden Route for the drive.
By experience
Or pick the kind of day you want.
Safari if you came for the Big Five. A boat if you came for the whales. Wine tastings, cage dives, city walks, quad trails and the rest of it.
The Big Five
Dawn on a game drive.
South Africa is where most people meet their first lion. Open vehicles head out at first light: leopard in the riverine bush, elephant at the waterhole, rhino on the open plains. From the malaria-free reserves a short hop from the cities to the vast Kruger wilderness up north, the bush is the country’s headline act.
Browse the Big Five reserves →The coast road
Down the Garden Route.
Knysna’s lagoon, the forests and gorges of Tsitsikamma, dolphins off Plettenberg Bay and the long blue drive that strings them together. The three we would build a Garden Route trip around.
On the water
See the Cape from the sea.
A sunset sail along the Atlantic Seaboard, a catamaran past Clifton’s beaches, the seal island off Hout Bay and the whales that roll through in winter. Three easy ways onto the water from the V&A Waterfront.
Up north
Johannesburg and Soweto.
Where the country’s modern story was written: Vilakazi Street in Soweto, the Apartheid Museum, Constitution Hill and the Cradle of Humankind out west. Three days in Gauteng worth the trip up.
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