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8 days 7 nights
Daily Tour
Unlimited
English
This 8-day journey brings together three of South Africa’s most extraordinary experiences in a single, coherent itinerary — history, wilderness, and world-class music. It begins in Johannesburg, where two full days explore the Apartheid Museum, the streets of Soweto, and Constitution Hill: tracing the arc from apartheid’s machinery to the democracy it produced.
A transfer to Pilanesberg National Park follows — one of Africa’s finest Big Five reserves, set in the crater of a 1.2-billion-year-old volcano — for a sunset and dawn game drive before flying south to Cape Town. Four nights in the Mother City combine Table Mountain, the profound silence of Robben Island, a coastal drive to the penguin colony at Boulders Beach, and the headline event: two nights of premium admission at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, Africa’s premier celebration of jazz.
This is South Africa at its fullest — history, wilderness, culture, music, and coastline — in eight days.
You are met at O.R. Tambo International Airport and transferred to your hotel in Sandton. Johannesburg sits high, about a mile above the sea, and you feel it in the first hour. The air is thin and dry, the light is hard and clean, and the evenings cool down quickly even in March. The rest of the day is yours. Nelson Mandela Square is a short walk from the hotel if you would rather stretch your legs than sleep. No meals included today.
Hotel: Southern Sun Sandton
At the Apartheid Museum your ticket is issued at random and marks you white or non-white, and you enter through the gate that matches it. The point is made before you have seen a single exhibit. What follows is the clearest account of the period you will find anywhere. In the afternoon you go out to Soweto. Vilakazi Street is the only street in the world where two Nobel Peace Prize laureates have lived, Nelson Mandela at one end and Desmond Tutu further along. You visit the Hector Pieterson Museum, which stands close to where the thirteen-year-old was shot on the morning of 16 June 1976, and Walter Sisulu Square at Kliptown, where the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955 by three thousand people who had no vote.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast,Dinner
Hotel: Southern Sun Sandton
The morning is at Constitution Hill, the old fort and prison that held both Gandhi and Mandela. When the awaiting trial block was pulled down, its bricks were used to build the Constitutional Court that now stands on the same ground. Few buildings anywhere say so much by simply existing. You are here three days before Human Rights Day, which South Africa marks on 21 March, the anniversary of Sharpeville in 1960. Having spent yesterday with what the country was, this is the building it put in its place. You then drive out to Pilanesberg National Park, roughly two and a half hours northwest. The park lies inside the crater of a volcano that went quiet more than a billion years ago, and the ring of hills around you is what is left of it. You arrive in time for a sunset game drive in an open vehicle. The reserve is malaria free and sits where the Kalahari meets the bushveld, so you find animals here from both, which is unusual. Dinner is at the lodge, and you will hear the reserve through the night.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast,Dinner
Hotel: Bakubung Bush Lodge
You are out at first light. This is the best few hours to see the animals. The air is cold, the predators are still moving from the night, and the park is loud with birds before the heat arrives. After breakfast you return to Johannesburg and fly down to Cape Town, two hours south. If you have a window seat on the left, Table Mountain announces itself long before you land. You are transferred to the Commodore at the V&A Waterfront and the evening is free. The Waterfront is a working harbor with a city built around it, and it is on your doorstep.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast
Hotel: The Commodore Hotel
You go up Table Mountain by cable car in the morning, when the light is best and the wind is usually kindest. The floor of the car turns a full circle as you rise, so everyone gets the whole view without moving. The top is flat, wide and older than almost anything you have stood on. You will meet dassies up there, small and round and sunning themselves on the rocks, whose closest living relative is the elephant. The afternoon is free at the Waterfront. In the evening, you are taken to the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, with premium admission and transportation both ways. It is the largest gathering of its kind on the continent, several stages running at once, and the difficulty is choosing.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast
Hotel: The Commodore Hotel
Today is Human Rights Day in South Africa, the anniversary of Sharpeville. You could hardly spend it in two better places. You sail from the Nelson Mandela Gateway, a short walk from the hotel, and cross to Robben Island. You see the limestone quarry where the prisoners cut rock for years, and where the glare off the white stone permanently damaged Mandela's eyes. You see his cell. He spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years here. The prison section is led by a man who was held in it. That is what makes the morning what it is, and no plaque can do the same work. The crossing back is quiet, with Table Mountain filling the view ahead of you. The evening is your second night at the festival. Tomorrow is a public holiday across the country, so this is the night Cape Town stays out for.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast
Hotel: The Commodore Hotel
Today is a public holiday in South Africa, since Human Rights Day fell on the Sunday, so we start early and let the crowds follow us rather than meet us. A full day down the peninsula along False Bay. You stop at Kalk Bay, a working fishing harbor where the boats come in and the seals wait alongside for whatever is thrown over. You continue to Simon's Town, a naval base since 1814, and the burial place of Just Nuisance, a Great Dane and the only dog ever formally enlisted in the Royal Navy. At Boulders Beach you walk the boardwalk through a colony of African penguins. They arrived here in the early nineteen eighties as two breeding pairs and settled among the granite. The species is now endangered, so the colony matters more than it looks. In the evening, you dine at GOLD Restaurant in Green Point. Dinner is fourteen small dishes drawn from across the continent, served with drumming at the table and Malian puppetry between courses. It is the last night, and it is meant to be.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast,Dinner
Hotel: The Commodore Hotel
Breakfast, and time at the Waterfront if your flight allows it. You are transferred to Cape Town International Airport for your onward flight.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast
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