South Africa

• The Cape Escape - Cape Town
• My Mountain High in Cape Town - Cape Town
• The Drop Zone - Cape Town
• On the trail to true adventure - Johannesburg
• The great es-Cape - Cape Town
• Come into the Garden - The Garden Route
• My Zulu Extravaganza - Durban
• Up Close and Personal - South African Safari
• Tracking Big Game - Kruger National Park
• Sleeping with the Lions - South African Safari
• A Safari with real pride - South African Safari
• Where the Lion King comes to Life - South African Safari
• Our guide to the top 10 safaris - South African Safari
• A Roaring Success - Victoria Falls
• Come into the Garden - The Garden Route
• The Worlds Most Beautiful Road? - The Garden Route
• Zipping off to Zanzibar - Zanzibar, Kenya
• Africa's catch of the day - Mozambique
• The Cape escape… and it was right up my Street - Garden Route: South Africa
• The nation kissed by a rainbow - South Africa
• Our wild silver wedding! - Kenya

WHEN WE SURVEYED 15 winter sun destinations Cape Town came out way on top. With overnight flights in both directions and no jet lag, the city alone, with its eyeball popping setting, mountains outside the back door and gorgeous beaches at the end of every other road, is worth visiting even for a weekend. But if you have a week or more, you can fully enjoy the Cape’s rich pleasures. Most heading there will combine four or five distinct holiday experiences – the city, fabulous beaches, a safari, a drive along the Garden Route and the world’s most attractive winelands.

South Africa remains a bargain, with main dishes in the fanciest restaurants less than £10 and wine about £5 a bottle. Step down a touch in style and you can have three courses for your tenner and find plenty of good B&Bs for £25 a head. So here’s our perfect week in the new down under. It starts in the Eastern Cape and finishes with the city, flying into Port Elizabeth via Johannesburg and home non-stop from Cape Town. Although you could just as easily do the trip in reverse.

The Garden Route

The name is misleading, as much of the Garden Route is no more than the M2 at home. It’s not even about gardens as we think of them, but take a side road down to the sea and you’ll see what all the fuss is about. Tsitsikamma National Park is the real garden on the Garden Route. It is the last remaining patch of the indigenous forest that once covered the entire narrow corridor of flatland between the mountains and the sea (most of it was felled by the early Dutch settlers to make furniture and boats).

Here you can see more species of tree than in the whole of the northern hemisphere, broken by meadowy interludes of native fynbos, a carpeting of scrub and wild flowers that botanists classifyas one of the earth’s seven floral kingdoms (the Cape is the smallest but richest of these, with 8,500 species). Follow the signs to Storms River Mouth. The road twists and buckles towards the sea, which you first smell, then hear, as it pounds against the rocky shore. Then the foliage draws back to reveal the Indian Ocean. The next point of land due south is the bottom of the earth.

You can swim from the tiny beach, walk to the suspension footbridge over the mouth of Storms River (90 minutes there and back) and eat in the park restaurant (main courses about £5). You could also float in a fat black rubber tube down the river, one of several that cut through the coastal plateau in a series of spectacular gorges.

If you plan your trip far enough ahead, at least a year, you could book a trek on the otter trail, a five-day coastal hike with simple accommodation included in the £36 fee (food must be carried on your back). Again, plan in advance and you can rent one of the park’s seafront log cabins.

Next stop is Plettenberg Bay, South Africa’s Cote d’Azur. The town is a tutti-frutti confection on an escarpment above the long white beach and azure sea. Two hotels share top billing. The Plettenberg has views of the bay, the mountains and evenof whales frolicking in the breakers. Dinner, worthy of a Michelin star, costs little more than £40 for two including wine. The hip retreat is The Lodge on the Bay, a six-room, contemporary boutique hotel, with a spa, a pool, double bathtubs, and a tranquil restaurant.

One of the best B&Bs is Bosavern, a white-and-blue house above Plettenberg Bay, with great views, a pool and seven rooms with private balconies. Last year, Knysna (the K is silent) was voted South Africa’s favourite town. The big attraction? Oysters. Sample homefarmed ones at the Oyster Company, at a working jetty on Thesen Island where you’ll pay £3.50 for six. Allow time for a round-trip excursion to the Featherbed Nature Reserve, on one of the two crab-claw headlands that enclose the lagoon. The trip includes a boat ride, a climb by trailer to the top and a gentle walk down to a beach for lunch, then the boat back to base.

Two handy places to stay are opposite each other on the main street. Backpackers will prefer the Caboose where the rooms look like train compartments; prices start at £17 for two, including breakfast and use of the pool. Across the road is the Knysna Log Inn.

You could, if you’re fed up with driving, leapfrog from Knysna to Cape Town by dropping off the rental car and stepping aboard the Outeniqua Choo Tjoe steam train, all glinting brass, wooden carriages and billowing steam. It goes by causeway across the lagoon like a miraculous whistle-wailing apparition, and hugs the coast before cutting inland to George. Two trains a day run in each direction (no service on Sunday), and the journey time is about 2hours 30mins; from George, there are several flights a day to Cape Town.

Meanwhile, back on the road, the old whaling station of Hermanus has done an ecological U-turn, becoming Africa’s leading spot for whale-watching. Every May, they come to calve in Walker Bay. Spot them either from a boat (a two-hour trip costs £26), from the cliff-top footpath, or if you stay in rooms 1 or 2 at the Birkenhead, while you lie in your bed.

The whales leave by mid- December, but the kitsch 11- room hotel is good for a one night stay at any time. An alternative is the much more posh Marine or try the three-star Windsor, on the seafront. A short distance from town, Grootbos is a private nature reserve where the emphasis is on flora. It was described by David Bellamy as ‘the best example of conservation biodiversity I have seen’.

The Winelands

A tour of the Winelands is not just about wines and vines, but also about old Cape Dutch architecture, gabled estates and stunning mountain scenery. You can see this without even leaving the city. Groot Constantia, the oldest, grandest estate, and Klein Constantia, whose wine was served by Louis XIV at Versailles, are extremely tasterfriendly, even for visitors clearly not in the market for buying cases.

At most vineyards, you pay about £2 to taste a selection of six wines. The winelands are best explored by spending a day following one of the mapped and signposted wine routes, I’d suggest driving out to leafy Stellenbosch, a 40 minute run (also linked by train to the city) or to the even prettier Franschock. Most estates serve lunch, maybe as a picnic to enjoy on shaded lawns, sipping chilled whites, while you drink in the fabulous backdrop of mountains. If you can find an extra night, spend it here.

Le Quartier Francais, in Franschoek, has an award-winning restaurant and 15 rooms scattered around the pool. More economical is Dorp Huis in Stellenbosch, which has an old fashioned charm. As the airport is on this side of the city, you might want to make the winelands your last stop before winging home. A 20- minute drive away from checkin, Spier has a superb buffet lunch for £12, which you can enjoy on a big terrace under the oaks. It’s a great spot for families – lots of space for running around, as well as a couple of pet cheetahs to make up for any missed on safari.