South Africa, one day at a time.
Which Cape Point run actually reaches the penguins. What a Big Five morning costs. When the whales are in Walker Bay. Every tour in the country, reviewed.
The days South Africa is famous for.
The cableway, the Cape Point run with the penguins, a Big Five morning, a Winelands lunch, the whales off Hermanus and the road east along the Garden Route. Most itineraries are built from these, and each is booked a different way.
You can be watching elephant before lunch.
South Africa is the one safari country you can do on a city break. Two hours from Cape Town there is a malaria-free Big Five reserve; two hours from Johannesburg there is Pilanesberg; and the Kruger runs the length of the Mpumalanga escarpment for anyone with a spare three days.
What a day in South Africa costs.
Every tour on the site, sorted by price. The exchange rate is the reason a country this expensive to fly to is this cheap to travel in.
Harbour cruises, township walks, the hop-on bus, museum entry and a morning up the cable car.
The classic full days: Cape Point and the penguins, a Winelands tasting run, whale watching out of Hermanus.
Big Five game drives, shark cage mornings out of Gansbaai, helicopter flights and the multi-day Kruger runs.
- 1Big Five Game Reserve with Lunchfrom $236
- 2Pilanesberg Nature Reserve Game Safarifrom $186
- 32-Day Safari at Garden Route Game Lodgefrom $533
The tours South Africa fills first.
Every review →The peninsula runs, the cableway combinations and the Winelands days that carry more travellers than anything else between Cape Town and the Kruger.
1
Wine Tour: Paarl, Franschhoek & Stellenbosch incl 3 wineries
Explore Paarl, Franschhoek, and Stellenbosch on an affordable Cape Winelands tour with 15 tastings, pairings, history, and transport.
From · $43
Read our review →
2
Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour with Optional Cruise
from $23
3
Cape of Good Hope & Penguins Day Tour with Pickup
from $52
4
Zipline Cape Town – From Foot of Table Mountain Reserve
from $49
5
Table Mountain Cable Car, Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour
from $45
6
Cape Point and Boulder’s Penguins Full Day Tour
from $34
7
Cape Point & Boulders Beach Full-Day Tour
from $40
8
Big Five Game Reserve with Lunch
from $236
Cape Town is a mountain in the middle of a city.
The peninsula packs a cableway, two oceans, a penguin colony and a wine valley inside an hour’s drive. Chapman’s Peak links most of it. The catch is wind: the cableway closes on a south-easter, so build the flexible days around the fixed ones.
Three valleys, forty minutes from the sea.
Stellenbosch does the oak-shaded old town, Franschhoek runs a tram between its estates, and Constantia is close enough to Cape Town to be a half day. A tasting here costs what a single glass costs at home, which is why almost nobody stops at one estate.
- 1Wine Tour: Paarl, Franschhoek & Stellenbosch incl 3 wineriesfrom $43
- 23 Regions Wine Tour with 3 Estates, 15 Winesfrom $53
- 3Franschhoek Wine Tram Hop-on Hop-offfrom $50
The places South Africa asks you to understand.
Robben Island is reached by a ferry from the V&A Waterfront that turns back in heavy swell, so it is worth booking early in a trip rather than late. The Apartheid Museum sits beside a Johannesburg theme park and takes most of an afternoon. Soweto and Langa are lived-in neighbourhoods where guides are residents. Nothing here is a highlight reel; the reviews say what each visit is actually like.
Browse each in full:
Four things that only happen at the bottom of Africa.
Beaches, vineyards and game parks exist elsewhere. A cage in Gansbaai, a hairpin road into Lesotho and a colony of penguins on a suburban beach do not.
The Cage
Gansbaai sits on the strip of water between Danger Point and Dyer Island, and the boats run out to it before breakfast because the wind gets up by ten. You go in on a surface cage clipped to the hull, breathing normal air, so no dive ticket is needed. Great whites have thinned since the orcas moved in; bronze whalers and copper sharks now do most of the showing up, and the honest operators say so on the dock.
- 1From Hermanus or Cape Town: Shark Cage Diving Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 684 reviews
- 2Shark Cage Diving and Viewing with transport from Cape Town★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 576 reviews
- 3Gansbaai Eco-Friendly Shark Cage Diving Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 326 reviews
The Sani Pass
The road from Underberg climbs 1,300 metres of unpaved switchbacks to a border post at 2,876 metres, and only high-clearance 4×4s are allowed past the South African gate. At the top is Lesotho, a pub that claims to be Africa’s highest, and Basotho herders in blankets. Bring a passport; people forget, and the post turns them around.
- 1Private Sani Pass Classic Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 113 reviews
- 2Sani Pass and Lesotho Day Tour from Underberg★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 104 reviews
- 3Sani Pass & Lesotho 4×4 Experience Day Tour from Durban★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 102 reviews
Boulders
African penguins colonised Boulders Beach in Simon’s Town in 1982 and never left, which is how a threatened species ended up nesting between holiday cottages. Boardwalks keep you off the nests; the swimming beach next door is open, granite-sheltered and warmer than anything on the Atlantic side.
- 1Cape of Good Hope & Penguins Day Tour with Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 3,362 reviews
- 2Cape Point and Boulder’s Penguins Full Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,118 reviews
- 3Cape Point & Boulders Beach Full-Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 3,032 reviews
The Wine Tram
An open-sided tram and a linked bus run a hop-on loop between the Franschhoek estates, which solves the one real problem with a tasting day: somebody has to drive. Lines are colour-coded, each stops at five or six farms, and the last tram back is earlier than most people expect.
- 1Franschhoek Wine Tram Hop-on Hop-off★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,972 reviews
- 2Full-Day Franschhoek Hop On Hop Off Wine Tram Tour from Cape Town★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 579 reviews
- 3Full-Day Wine Tasting Tour with Wine Tram★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 261 reviews
South Africa runs on a southern calendar.
Christmas is high summer and the beaches are full of South Africans. The whales arrive in Walker Bay around June and stay until November. Winter is the best game viewing, because the bush thins out and animals come to the waterholes. The Cape rains in winter; the Kruger rains in summer. Almost nothing here follows a northern year.
By region — where you land in South Africa, and what is near
Cape Town305 tours
Johannesburg79 tours
Mpumalanga & the Kruger21 tours
Durban23 tours
Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha)26 tours
The Garden Route22 tours
Pretoria27 tours
Hermanus12 tours- All 20 regions →
By experience — what kind of South African day is it?
Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, the long way.
The N2 east from the Cape strings together a whale bay, a lagoon town, a forest canyon and an elephant park. Ten days is comfortable; a week is doable; four days is a blur.
Cape Town
Hermanus
Oudtshoorn
Knysna
Plettenberg Bay
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