Arrival in Johannesburg
Johannesburg sits on the Highveld at about 5,750 feet, one of the few major cities in the world built on neither a river nor a coastline. It grew almost overnight after gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand reef in 1886, and locals still call it Joburg, or simply Jozi. Nearby Pretoria, the administrative capital, is known for the jacaranda trees that turn entire streets purple every October and November, and for the Union Buildings and Voortrekker Monument that anchor its skyline.
From the airport, the drive west carries you toward Sun City and Pilanesberg, the landscape opening into bushveld as the city falls away. Check in for the night at the Royal Marang Hotel, a resort in Phokeng, about an hour from the reserve.
Pilanesberg National Park
Pilanesberg sits inside the crater of a volcano that went extinct some 1.2 billion years ago, one of the best-preserved alkaline ring complexes on Earth. At its peak, the mountain that once stood here rose higher than Kilimanjaro; what's left today is a series of concentric hills twenty-four kilometers across, with Mankwe Lake at the center.
The reserve as it exists now is largely the result of Operation Genesis, a 1979 program that reintroduced more than six thousand animals to land that had been farmed for a century, one of the most ambitious game relocation projects ever attempted anywhere. It's also malaria-free and home to the Big Five, which is what makes it such an easy add-on so close to Johannesburg.
A morning game drive at dawn, rest at the hotel through the heat of the day, then a second drive as the light goes gold in the late afternoon.
Johannesburg to Knysna
A short flight from Johannesburg brings you to George, gateway to the Garden Route, and from there it's a short transfer to Knysna. The town sits on a warm-water lagoon, sealed off from the Indian Ocean by two sandstone headlands known as the Heads, where a narrow, current-swept channel has wrecked more ships than anyone still counts.
Checking in at the Knysna waterfront puts the whole lagoon at your doorstep for the three nights ahead.
Tsitsikamma National Park
Tsitsikamma takes its name from a Khoisan phrase meaning place of much water, and the description holds. The park was proclaimed in 1964 as Africa's first marine national park, protecting eighty kilometers of rocky coastline where ancient forest runs straight down to cliffs above the Indian Ocean.
The walk to Storms River Mouth ends at a suspension bridge built in 1969, strung just above the river where it meets the sea, with the forested gorge rising on both sides. Afterward, Birds of Eden and Monkeyland, a pair of free-roaming sanctuaries along the Garden Route, offer a gentler contrast, walking trails through netted forest canopy where hundreds of birds and primates move freely overhead.
Free Day in Knysna
A day with nothing scheduled, which in Knysna is its own kind of itinerary. A lagoon cruise out toward the Heads is the classic choice, or the ferry across to Featherbed Nature Reserve on the western headland, a private reserve opened in 1984 by the South African television personality William Smith, whose father, the ichthyologist J.L.B. Smith, identified the living coelacanth caught off the South African coast in 1938.
Otherwise, the town itself rewards slow wandering: oyster bars, waterfront cafes, and views back across the water from almost anywhere you sit.
Oudtshoorn and the Cango Caves
The road north from Knysna climbs over the Outeniqua Mountains and drops into the Little Karoo, a dry, dramatic basin where Oudtshoorn built its fortune twice over on ostrich feathers, first in an 1875 to 1880 boom and again from 1900 to 1914, when no fashionable hat in Europe was complete without them. The grand sandstone townhouses built by the feather barons of that era are still known locally as feather palaces.
Thirty kilometers north, in the foothills of the Swartberg range, the Cango Caves have been known since long before any of that, first to the Khoisan, whose word for the surrounding mountains, rich in water, gave the caves their name. A guided walk leads through a series of limestone chambers formed over millions of years, hung with formations that took just as long to grow.
A stop at a working ostrich farm rounds out the day, with time to meet the birds up close.
Transfer to Arniston
South from Oudtshoorn, the road eventually reaches the Overberg coast and the small fishing village of Arniston, named for a British East Indiaman that wrecked on the rocks nearby in 1815. Whitewashed cottages, a working harbor, and some of the emptiest beaches on this stretch of coast make it a quiet place to spend the night before heading to the southernmost point of the continent.
Cape Agulhas and Hermanus
Most visitors think the Cape of Good Hope marks the meeting of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, but the real dividing line runs through Cape Agulhas, a hundred and fifty kilometers to the southeast, the true southernmost point of Africa. Early Portuguese sailors named it Cabo das Agulhas, Cape of Needles, because their compasses showed no deviation here at all. The lighthouse dates to 1848, the second oldest still working in the country, and a short walk from it a simple stone cairn marks the exact tip of the continent.
From there, the road runs on to Hermanus, a town built along a twelve-kilometer cliff path famous as the best land-based whale watching in the world. The southern right whales themselves keep to a schedule of their own, arriving from June and gone again by December, so late March finds the cliffs quiet, but the walk along them, and the town's old harbor, are worth the stop regardless.
Stellenbosch
Stellenbosch was named in 1679 by Simon van der Stel, the Cape's governor at the time, making it the second-oldest European settlement in South Africa and one of the country's oldest wine regions. Oak-lined streets and Cape Dutch gables give the town a settled, unhurried feel that's changed surprisingly little in three centuries.
Fairview, a short drive away in Paarl, has been making wine since 1693 and is nearly as well known now for its goat cheese as for its Rhône-style reds, thanks to a resident herd that climbs a purpose-built stone tower on the property. Lunch and a tasting there settle you in for two nights among the vineyards.
Boschendal and the Drive to Cape Town
Boschendal's title deeds date to 1685, making it one of the two oldest wine estates in the country, first granted to a Huguenot refugee named Jean le Long who had fled religious persecution in France. The Cape Dutch manor house at its center, raised by the de Villiers family who farmed the land for more than a century, is now a national heritage monument, and the cellar still in use was built in 1795.
After a morning in the vineyards, the road turns toward Cape Town, Table Mountain rising ahead as the winelands give way to the city.
Cape Town and Table Mountain
Table Mountain's sandstone was laid down more than 400 million years ago, long before the Alps or the Rockies began to rise. The flat summit is often draped in cloud that locals call the tablecloth, and a cable car, running since 1929, carries visitors up through it in under ten minutes.
Below, Cape Town spreads out between the mountain and the sea, and the afternoon leaves time to explore the city before a sunset cruise with wine along the Atlantic seaboard.
Cape of Good Hope and Boulders Beach
The Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias rounded this headland in 1488, the first European known to have done so, and the Portuguese crown renamed it the Cape of Good Hope for the sea route to India it seemed to promise. It isn't, despite the reputation, where the oceans actually meet, but the scenery hardly needs the distinction: rugged cliffs, fynbos, and often baboons and ostriches along the reserve's access road.
On the way back, Boulders Beach holds one of the world's few land-accessible African penguin colonies, which grew from just two breeding pairs first recorded here in 1982. Boardwalks now thread between the granite boulders that give the beach its name, close enough to watch the colony go about an ordinary day.
Cape Town to Johannesburg
A free morning in Cape Town, with time for a helicopter flight over the peninsula or a paragliding run off Lion's Head for anyone who wants a last look at the city from above, before an evening flight back to Johannesburg for the night.
Return to the United States
Departure from Johannesburg and the long flight home, fourteen days of volcanic craters, lagoons, wine country, and two oceans behind you.
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