Visit South Africa

South Africa

Geography

The Republic of South Africa lies at the southern end of the African continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the east and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and is bordered to the north by Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland and totally encloses Lesotho. South Africa has three major geographical regions, namely plateau, mountains and the coastal belt. The high plateau has sharp escarpments which rise above the plains, or veld. Despite two major river systems, the Limpopo and the Orange, most of the plateau lacks surface water.

Along the coastline are sandy beaches and rocky coves, and the vegetation is shrublike. The mountainous regions which run along the coastline from the Cape of Good Hope to the Limpopo Valley in the northeast of the country are split into the Drakensberg, Nuweveldberg and Stormberg ranges.

Following the 1994 elections, South Africa was organized into nine regions. These comprise the Western Cape with its provincial and national capital of Cape Town, the Eastern Cape with its provincial capital of Bisho, the Northern Cape with its provincial capital of Kimberley, KwaZulu-Natal with its provincial capital of Pietermaritzburg, the Free State with its provincial capital of Bloemfontein, the North West Province with its provincial capital of Mmabatho, Limpopo (formerly called the Northern Province) with its provincial capital of Polokwane (formerly called Pietersburg), Mpumalanga with its provincial capital of Nelspruit, and Gauteng with its provincial capital of Johannesburg.

South Africa is a stunning country of magnificent landscape, from desert dunes to rolling farmlands, savannah bush, subtropical hardwood forests and superb white sand coast. It has game viewing to equal the best in Africa from Kruger in Mpumalanga to the Zululand area of Kwazulu-Natal, and a host of small parks and reserves in the Northern Provinces and Eastern Capes.

Mapa de Sudafrica

Drakensberg, Sudáfrica

The Winelands

North of Cape Town, the winelands are a stunning region of vineyards, old Cape-Dutch villages and mansions. Many of the vineyards have excellent restaurants; most offer tastings and some provide bed and breakfast. Stellenbosch, a major center of wine production, is also one of South Africa’s oldest villages with a great many attractive buildings, including the excellent Village Museum. The local tourist office provides details for a historic walking tour. Tiny Franschhoek originally hosted refugee Huguenots from France, who brought their wine-growing skills to South Africa. It now has an excellent Huguenot Museum. Paarl is home to several small museums and the KWV Wine Cellars. In the Breede Valley area, the charming little towns of Tulbagh, Worcester, Wellington and Ceres all have fine old buildings, interesting small museums, beautiful scenery, vineyards and fruit orchards.

The West Coast

The fertility of the southern Cape region gradually gives way to the rugged and beautiful West Coast, which has abundant shellfish, and numerous fishing villages, including Lambert’s Bay, a good surfing spot. Inland, the sculpted sandstone Cederberg mountains separate the west coast from the arid Great Karoo Desert, which bursts into a mass of flowers every October to November.

The South Coast and Garden Route

East from Cape Town, the coastal area known as the Overberg includes attractive resort towns such as Somerset West and Hermanus, probably the best place in South Africa for whale watching; Cape Agulhas, the less than inspirational cape which is actually the southerly tip of Africa; the wreck-strewn cliffs around Arniston; and Elim, a 19th-century Mission village whose principal profession is still growing and drying flowers. Swellendam, 215km (130 miles) from Cape Town, is a charming Cape-Dutch village, rich in fine old buildings, several of which make up the excellent Drostdy Museum.

From here onwards, the south coast becomes known as The Garden Route because of the wealth of forests that used to line the coast. There are a couple of areas of hardwood forest left, but even with so much development, this is a wonderful area for holidays, with excellent beaches, good swimming and plenty of activities on offer.
Mossel Bay was one of the first harbors visited by European sailors and the town now has an excellent museum charting the maritime history of the coast.

Wilderness is a pretty little resort sandwiched between the dunes and the reedy lakes of the Wilderness Natural Reserve, an excellent place for birdwatching and canoeing.

Knysna is a comfortable tourist town situated between the lush inland Knysna forests and the horseshoe-shaped Knysna Lagoon. It has several interesting small museums and a nearby game farm. South Africa’s trendiest resort, Plettenberg Bay, has magnificent beaches, the Robberg Nature Reserve, where you can usually see seals and dolphins and Monkeyland, a sanctuary dedicated to primates of all sorts.
An equally beautiful - but startlingly different - route, called the ‘inland route’, runs parallel to the coast, on the far side of the mountains. This leaves Cape Town via the Winelands, continuing through market gardening towns, such as Ashton, Robertson and Montagu, well known for wine and olives, into the Little Karoo, the scrubby extension of the Great Karoo Desert. Most people choose a mix of the two routes: crossing the Outeniqua and Swartberg Mountains over a series of dramatically beautiful switchback passes, of which the most beautiful is undoubtedly the Swartberg Pass to Prince Alfred; and the more common Outeniqua Pass from George to Oudtshoorn, famous for its ostrich farms, as well as the Cango Caves.

The Eastern Cape

The Eastern Cape is South Africa’s hidden gem, much of it little known and underexplored by tourists, but with an extraordinary variety of cultural history and scenic beauty, ranging from the vast, dry Great Karoo to the fertile agricultural lands of the Little Karoo and the ‘Settler Country’ around Grahamstown and, above all, the magnificent cliffs and coves of the Wild Coast. The Eastern Cape is also home to two of the country’s major seaports, East London and Port Elizabeth, and several excellent small game reserves, including Addo Elephant Park. The area around East London is the homeland of the Xhosa people, many of whom, including Nelson Mandela, have played a crucial role in recent South African history.

Garden route, South Africa

Port Elizabeth

‘PE’, as the city is known locally, is unremarkable, being dominated by industry and freeways and subject to strong winds for most of the year. The City Hall and Market Square are worth a visit, containing a replica of the Dias Cross, originally placed by the Portuguese navigator Bartholomew Dias. There are several other interesting buildings, including a memorial to Prester John, the Campanile Clock Tower and the Donkin Lighthouse, while the old part of town, above the city center, has some attractive Victorian houses. The Museum, Oceanarium and Snake Park are also on the seafront at Humewood. The King George IV Art Gallery & Fine Arts Hall has an excellent collection of 19th- and 20th-century art and Castle Hill Museum, in the city’s oldest house, has a fine collection of Cape furniture. Settler’s Park Nature Reserve at How Avenue abounds with indigenous flora and St George’s Park has open-air exhibitions and craft fairs, as well as theatrical productions. South of the city are good beaches, such as King’s Beach and Humewood Beach. The latter features the Apple Express, one of the few remaining narrow-gauge steam trains, which runs on occasion from Humewood to Thornhill.

West of Port Elizabeth

The Eastern Cape portion of the Garden Route (see also Western Cape) notably includes the Tsitsikamma Coastal National Park, the remnant of a once-massive indigenous forest, home to immense native trees such as yellowwoods. Jeffreys Bay is a world-renowned surfer’s paradise. Heading north, miles and miles of sandy beaches run all the way up the coast. The Alexandria State Forest is a reserve that runs along the coast and contains a hiking trail along the beach. East from here is Dias Cross, the location of one of Bartholemew Dias’ stone crosses and a desolate paradise for beach lovers.

Inland, the Karoo is a vast and beautiful upland area with spectacular sunsets: drier, hotter and colder than the coasts. The novelist Olive Schreiner made the area famous and her house at Cradock has been restored. The Mountain Zebra National Park is worth a visit, on the northern slopes of the Bankberg range.
The Addo Elephant National Park, 72km (45 miles) north of Port Elizabeth, was created in 1931 to protect the last of the eastern Cape elephants. Recently massively expanded, it offers an excellent range of game, including black rhino, buffalo and antelope and more than 170 bird species. There are also several private reserves nearby, including the excellent Shamwari and Kwandwe, both of which have very upmarket accommodation and ‘Big Five’ (elephant, lion, leopard, rhino and buffalo) game viewing.

The town of Graaff-Reinet, situated in the heart of the Karoo Nature Reserve at the foot of the Sneeuberg Mountains, is one of the finest surviving Cape-Dutch towns in South Africa, with many attractive 18th- and 19th-century buildings, as well as parks and museums. Just 5km (3 miles) outside the town, it is possible for visitors to drive into the Valley of Desolation along a twisting single-track road that eventually climbs into the mountains.

From the viewpoints, it is possible to look down over Graaff-Reinet across towering red and ochre outcrops of rock. The nearby town of Nieu Bethesda is worth a visit for the Owl House, a remarkable sculpture garden by eccentric artist Helen Martins, subject of a play by Athol Fugard.

Settler Country

East of Port Elizabeth, Kenton-on-Sea and Port Alfred are pretty little holiday towns, the latter on the mouth of the Kowie River – canoeing trips can be undertaken from Port Alfred to Bathurst, home of The Pig and Whistle, the oldest pub in South Africa (1831).
A short distance inland, Victorian Grahamstown is home to one of South Africa’s best universities and hosts a giant annual arts festival each July. The town has many fine buildings, amongst which the most interesting are the Cathedral of St Michael and St George, situated in the triangular Church Square, the 1820 Settlers Monument (after the first British to settle the area), Fort Selwyn, and rows of shops and houses on Church Square, Artificers’ Square, Hill Street and MacDonald Street. The town also has several excellent museums, including the Albany Museum, History Museum, Natural Sciences Museum and the International Library of African Music. Local development projects offer traditional Xhosa meals.

Fort Hare University, in the nearby town of Alice, was the country’s first black university, founded in 1916. King William’s Town is not only a fine Victorian town, with many beautiful houses and the excellent Kaffrarian Museum, but is the birth and burial place of nationalist leader, Steve Biko.

One hour’s drive from Grahamstown is the village of Hogsback, situated in the striking Amatola Mountains. It is an ideal place to walk in the forest of yellowwood, stinkwood and Cape chestnut trees along trails to magical waterfalls – the most spect

Parque Nacional Kruger, Sudáfrica

Johannesburg and Soweto

The discovery of gold near Johannesburg in 1886 turned a small shanty town into the bustling modern city that is today the center of the world’s gold-mining industry and the commercial nucleus of South Africa. The city is currently undergoing a fundamental transformation as planners in the post-apartheid era struggle to integrate wealthy ‘white’ areas to the north, a decaying inner city, and the poverty-stricken ‘black’ townships to the south. The city is, as well as being a potentially dangerous place to live and stroll about, the cultural center of South Africa, with a post-apartheid influx of traders from the north enhancing its cosmopolitan character.

The Central Business District (CBD) is characterized by a stark contrast of skyscrapers and bustling street markets; most businesses catering to affluent clients have moved out to the northern suburbs. A spectacular view of the city is available from the Observatory on the 50th floor of the Carlton Center. To the west, of some historical interest, is the Rand Club, haunt of mining magnates past and present. Also west of the center, Newtown has been the focus of an urban renewal project which includes the excellent Museum Africa, several excellent restaurants, the Market Theater, a famous center of alternative theater during the apartheid era and after; and the South African Breweries’ Centenary Center. More mainstream theater, music and dance can be seen at the Civic Theater in Braamfontein, also the location of the Gertrude Posel Gallery, one of many small, university-run museums, housing a collection of traditional African art.

Just outside the center is Hillbrow, home to, amongst others, large communities of immigrants from the rest of Africa; a landmark is the massive Ponti building, dubbed ‘petit Kinshasa’ by locals. To the north of the CBD lies Yeoville, more bohemian and considerably safer. The center of Yeoville life is Rockey Street, lined with cafes and bars where visitors can while away the days in relative peace.
The north of Johannesburg consists of affluent leafy suburbs. Directly north of the city center, Parktown was the home of the so-called ‘Randlords’, the 19th-century Gold Rush millionaires, whose houses are still an imposing sight. Nearby is a series of wonderful open spaces containing notable landmarks, such as the Johannesburg Zoo, Zoo Lake (across the road) and the South African National Museum of Military History. North of this are Rosebank, teeming with upmarket bars, restaurants and shops; and Sandton, probably the wealthiest part of Johannesburg and to all intents and purposes, now the city center.

Excursions

To the south is the city’s only amusement park, Gold Reef City, built on the site of a gold mine, with underground tours as part of the attraction.

Soweto, the massive black ‘township’ to the south, is home to some 4.5 million of the province’s poorest people, and also to many shebeens (informal bars) and thousands of churches representing hundreds of mainline and independent African denominations. The safest way to visit Soweto is as part of an organized tour. Tourists are welcome and there is plenty to see. As well as shebeens and music venues, tours include visits to nationalist landmarks such as Freedom Square, used for rallies, the Hector Peterson Memorial, dedicated to the first child to die in the uprisings, and Nelson and Winnie Mandela’s home, now a small museum.

Further afield, Heidelberg is a small town with an interesting Transport Museum. North of Sandton, are the Johannesburg Lion Park, Snake Park, Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve and Lesedi Cultural Village.

Sterkfontein, in the Magaliesberg mountains, is home to the Wonder Caves, one of the world’s most important prehistoric sites; 2.5 million-year-old Australopithecus africanus was first discovered here.

Pretoria

Named after the Voortrekker leader, Andries Pretorius, the town council recently discussed proposals to change the name to Tshwane and ward the town city status. Pretoria is the administrative capital of South Africa, known as the ‘Jacaranda City’ because of the flowering trees lining its streets in October and November. Church Square is the center of the city, and a space of historical importance, while Church Street and its neighbors are lined by some fine 19th-century buildings including Paul Kruger’s House, the Groote Kerk, Melrose House, the old Raadsaal (parliament) of the Boer republic of Transvaal, and the State Theater, which features a program of fairly mainstream dance, music and drama. There are also several excellent small museums in the city, including the Pretoria Art Museum, the studios of local artists’ Coert Steynberg and Anton von Wouw, now both museums, the Museum of Science and Technology and the bizarre but fascinating Correctional Services Museum.