Table Mountain before breakfast. Big game before the week is out.
Which peninsula day actually stops at the penguins. What a Big Five drive costs from Cape Town, and why Kruger is a different trip altogether. Reviews of every tour you can book in South Africa.
The four that carry a first trip.
01The cablewayTable Mountain Cable Car, Hop-On Hop-Off Bus TourCable car up, city bus back down. Go early: wind shuts the cableway.
02The Cape dayCape of Good Hope & Boulder Penguins Full-Day Tour from Cape TownBoulders penguins, the Cape of Good Hope, and baboons in the car park.
03The wine dayWine Tour: Paarl, Franschhoek & Stellenbosch incl 3 wineriesThree valleys, three estates, fifteen tastings, and somebody else driving.
04The first safariPilanesberg Nature Reserve Game SafariRhino, elephant and lion, malaria free, two and a half hours from Joburg.
Big Five from Cape Town, or the real thing up north. Pick your park.
South Africa sells three completely different safaris and they are not interchangeable. A day trip from the city, a malaria-free reserve on the Eastern Cape, or the Lowveld parks that need three days and a flight. What each costs to board.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · Pilanesberg Nature Reserve Game Safari
A day from Cape TownBig Five reserves two hours inland, back for dinner.
Addo, on the Eastern CapeElephants in their hundreds, malaria free, off the Garden Route.
Kruger, the long wayThe Lowveld parks. Three days minimum, and worth the flight.
Pilanesberg from JoburgA malaria-free crater park, close enough for one day.
All 94 safari days in South Africa →
Cape Town first, then pick your second South Africa.
A mountain and two coastlines inside one city, a wine valley an hour inland, a garden route that eats a week, elephants on the Eastern Cape and the Lowveld parks up north. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
Cape Point, Boulders and the mountain: one road, one long day.
Everything in Cape Town →
The peninsula runs south from the city as one loop: Hout Bay, Chapman’s Peak, the Cape of Good Hope, then the penguins at Boulders on the way back. Nearly every operator drives the same road, so the real differences are pickup, group size and whether the cableway comes with it.
Cableway, or up on foot
The cable car takes five minutes and stops the moment the south-easter gets up. Walking Platteklip Gorge takes two hours and never closes. Either way, check the cableway the night before.
Cape Point and the penguins in one
Chapman’s Peak, the funicular at Cape Point, then Boulders Beach. Small groups cost more and stand around longer at each stop; the big coaches take the same road and give you twenty minutes.
Robben Island, from the waterfront
The ferry leaves the V&A Waterfront on a fixed timetable, and the prison tour is led by former political prisoners. Sailings are cancelled in heavy swell, so take an early one and keep the afternoon free.
Stellenbosch and Franschhoek are an hour out, and nobody drives back.
Cape Dutch gables, oak avenues and tasting rooms that pour six wines for what a coffee costs at home. The tram loops Franschhoek all day. The shared minibuses do three valleys and hand the driving to somebody else, which is the entire point.
Every day in the Winelands →
Southern rights in the bay, great whites in the cage, seals in the kelp.
The Atlantic side is cold enough to change what lives in it. Whales calve in Walker Bay from June, the cage boats run out of Gansbaai the year round, and the seal colonies off Hout Bay and Plettenberg Bay will swim circles around you.
What a day out in South Africa actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what you pay. The rand does a lot of the work here: plenty of the best days come in under the price of dinner at home.
Harbour cruises, township walks, the cableway, tastings in Stellenbosch and the hop-on buses.
The full-day standards: the peninsula loop, Robben Island, whale boats and the wine minibuses.
Big Five drives, the shark cage, private guides and the multi-day runs up to Kruger.
- 1Big Five Game Reserve with Lunchfrom $236
- 2Pilanesberg Nature Reserve Game Safarifrom $186
- 32-Day Safari at Garden Route Game Lodgefrom $533
Johannesburg holds the history, and most visitors come for it.
Soweto, the Apartheid Museum, Constitution Hill and the fossil caves at the Cradle of Humankind sit within an hour of each other. Guides here are usually from the places they are showing you. Pretoria is forty-five minutes up the road, and the two cities work as one trip.
- 1Pilanesberg Nature Reserve Game Safarifrom $186
- 2Hop-On Hop-Off Bus with Optional Soweto Tourfrom $23
- 3Soweto /Johannesburg and Apartheid Museum Guided Full Day Tourfrom $103
Four South African bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on ferry timetables, wind, whale calendars and school holidays, and they go from a long way out.
- 01Robben Island Ferry Ticket and Guided Prison TourThe ferry runs to a fixed timetable from the waterfront and sailings are cancelled in heavy swell. Tickets go weeks ahead over summer.
- 02Table Mountain Cable Car, Hop-On Hop-Off Bus TourThe cableway closes whenever the wind gets up, and it does not run after dark. Book a clear morning and go early.
- 03Shark Cage Diving ExperienceThe cage boats sail from Gansbaai on the early tide and stand down in heavy swell. Leave a spare day at the coast.
- 04Boat Based Whale Watching ExperienceSouthern rights are in Walker Bay from roughly June to November. Outside those months the boats are watching an empty bay.
Three things South Africa has and nowhere else does.
Wine estates and game parks exist all over the world. A steel cage in the Agulhas current, a flat mountain with a cloud that pours over the edge of it, and six hundred elephants queueing at a waterhole an hour from a beach town do not.
The Cloud on Table Mountain
When the south-easter blows through summer it pushes wet air up the mountain’s back, where it condenses on the plateau and spills over the northern edge in a slow white fall. Cape Town calls it the tablecloth. It is glorious from the city, useless from the top, and it is the same wind that shuts the cableway, so watch which side of it you book.
- 1Zipline Cape Town – From Foot of Table Mountain Reserve★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,179 reviews
- 2Table Mountain Cable Car, Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 3,157 reviews
- 3Table Mountain, Penguins & Cape Point Small Group Tour Cape Town★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,797 reviews
The Cage in the Agulhas
Two hours east of Cape Town the warm Agulhas current runs into the cold Benguela, and the seal colony at Dyer Island sits right in the seam. The boats drop a steel cage off the transom and you go down on a held breath, no licence and no tank. The season never really closes, but the water is clearest and the swell lowest from April to September.
- 1Shark 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
Addo’s Waterholes
Addo was proclaimed in 1931 to save the last eleven elephants in the district. There are well over six hundred now, in a malaria-free park an hour from the coast at Gqeberha, and through the dry months they come down to the waterholes in family groups a hundred strong. It is the one reserve where the animal you came for is close to a certainty.
- 1Addo Elephant National Park All Inclusive Full-Day Safari★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 872 reviews
- 25 Day Garden Route and Addo Safari – Best of South Africa Small Group Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 291 reviews
- 36-Day Garden Route & Addo South African Adventure from Cape Town★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 282 reviews
South Africa runs on two seasons, and they want opposite things.
The bush is best in the dry winter, when the grass is down and everything walks to water. The Cape is best in the dry summer, when the valleys are warm and the sea is swimmable. Whale season splits the difference, June to November in Walker Bay. If you only get one trip, come in the shoulder months and take both.
The days out South Africa books more than any other.
Every tour we have reviewed →One wine tour, one peninsula loop and a flat-topped mountain have carried more travellers than anything else on this site. Here is the order, and what each of them costs.
1
Wine Tour: Paarl, Franschhoek & Stellenbosch incl 3 wineries
Tour three Cape Winelands regions in one day, with 15 wines, cheese and sweet pairings, a Stellenbosch walk, and Mandela’s prison.
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
By place, from the Cape to the Lowveld
By kind of day, from a game drive to a long lunch
Cape Town, the Winelands, the Garden Route, Addo, then the bush.
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