South Africa and Victoria Falls in one trip

South Africa is one of the most rewarding countries in the world for a first trip to Africa. It has a great city in a spectacular setting, a coastline of beaches, cliffs and lagoons, vineyards and mountains, deep history, and some of the best wildlife viewing on the continent. It has good roads and an established tourist industry. Add Victoria Falls, a short flight from Johannesburg, and a single trip can take in much of what draws people to southern Africa.

Cape Town and the Cape

Cape Town sits beneath the flat-topped bulk of Table Mountain, which rises straight from the city centre to a summit more than a thousand metres high, reached by a cable car or a steep walk. The view from the top, over the city, the bay and Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for eighteen years, is one of the great city views in the world. The Cape Peninsula stretches south of the city, a spine of mountains between two oceans, with a dramatic coast road along its cliffs. Boulders Beach has its colony of African penguins, and Cape Point is a headland of cliffs at the end of the peninsula.

Inland, the Winelands, around Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, are a landscape of vineyards and Cape Dutch farmhouses beneath mountains, with a long tradition of wine-making going back to the seventeenth century.

The Garden Route and the interior

East of Cape Town, the Garden Route runs along the south coast past lagoons, forests and beaches, with the town of Knysna on its lagoon between two headlands. Inland, Oudtshoorn, in the dry Little Karoo, was once the centre of a boom in ostrich feathers, and its ostrich farms and the great Cango Caves nearby still draw visitors. Gqeberha, formerly Port Elizabeth, is a city on the coast at the eastern end of the route.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the battlefields of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, such as Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift, are powerful places to visit with a good guide, who brings the history to life. North-east of Johannesburg, the Mpumalanga escarpment drops to the lowveld through dramatic scenery, including the Blyde River Canyon, one of the largest canyons in the world.

Johannesburg, the largest city, grew up after gold was found on the Witwatersrand in 1886. It is the place to understand the country's twentieth-century history. The Apartheid Museum tells the story of the system of racial segregation and its end. In Soweto, the vast township to the south-west, Vilakazi Street is where both Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu once lived. Pretoria, the administrative capital, is close by, with the Union Buildings on their hill above formal gardens, and in spring its streets are purple with flowering jacaranda trees.

Kruger

Kruger National Park, on the border with Mozambique, is one of the largest and oldest game reserves in Africa, and one of the best places to see the Big Five: lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino. Its private reserves, known collectively as Greater Kruger, share unfenced boundaries with the park and offer game drives in open vehicles with experienced rangers and trackers. The best time for game viewing is the dry season, from about May to September, when the bush thins and the animals gather around water.

Victoria Falls

From Johannesburg, a flight of under two hours north reaches Victoria Falls, on the Zambezi between Zimbabwe and Zambia. There the river plunges over a cliff more than a kilometre and a half wide into a narrow gorge, raising a column of spray that can be seen from a long way off. The falls are at their fullest from about February to May and clearest from about June to August.

Just You's Experience South Africa with Victoria Falls Add-on, seventeen nights for solo travellers, includes Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula, Oudtshoorn, Knysna, Port Elizabeth, Pretoria, Mpumalanga, Kruger and Johannesburg, and Victoria Falls.

Travelsphere's Ultimate South Africa with Victoria Falls Add-on, twenty-one nights, adds Stellenbosch and the battlefields to Cape Town, the Cape Peninsula, Oudtshoorn, Knysna, Gqeberha, Greater Kruger and Kruger, Johannesburg and Victoria Falls.

The middle months of the year, from about May to September, suit the combination best. It is the dry season for Kruger and the falls, though the Cape is in its cooler, wetter winter.