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
• The chic side of this Rainbow Nation - South Africa
• The Cape escape - South Africa
• Game On! - South Africa
• Red wine and rainbows - South Africa

I KNOW YOU'RE NOT MEANT to swallow every mouthful at a wine tasting. But in the wineries of South Africa’s Cape, it’s hard not to glug – even just after breakfast.

At the Flagstaff winery at Somerset West, just outside Cape Town, it was proving hard to tear me away from cellarmaster Wilhelm ‘Red’ Coetzee, who kept offering yet another glass of nectar.

When he brought out a pinotage called Writer’s Block and invited me to savour ‘aromas of wild blueberry and ripe cherry’, I wanted to marry him. What writer could have a block when inspired by South Africa’s finest?

I mean men, as well as wine. My sober partner eventually dragged me away to start our first day of driving along South Africa’s glorious southern coast.

We headed inland to Stellenbosch, at the heart of the winelands, a dramatically beautiful area with cloudcapped mountains towering over valleys of neat vineyards and lovely towns that show their Cape Dutch and English Victorian heritage.

After a late lunch and some shopping, we continued to our first stop, Franschhoek. This exquisite town has just one main street, so it was easy to find our hotel, Le Quartier Francais.

It became even more beautiful when we could see the ocean

We were booked in for only two nights but, after a sublime dinner in the hotel’s famous restaurant, The Tasting Room, we decided we could stay there a week.

The accommodation is a series of small ‘cottages’ set around a central courtyard and swimming pool and, as we were to discover, the high standard of service is typical of a country that relies heavily on tourism.

For those who think that a town such as Franschhoek is a little twee, you can take a short drive through stunning scenery to Paarl, where black traders line the streets selling everything from saucepans to suitcases in a friendly and ‘real’ atmosphere.

Just outside Paarl is Drakenstein prison, from where Nelson Mandela walked to freedom in February 1990 after 27 years in jail.

After our stay at Le Quartier Francais the coast beckoned, so we drove in a loop through the mountain scenery of the Overberg towards Hermanus. If this route was wild and awe-inspiring it became even more beautiful when we could see the ocean too.

Under an exhilarating blue sky, we bowled along the road with mountains on our left and whitecapped waves on our right. Our next hotel, the Blue Gum Country Estate, near Stanford, was difficult to find but so worth it.

The old house is located along a rutted track but there is nothing primitive about the accommodation.

We had a huge room with an open fire, sofa and terrace looking out on to the ‘fynbos’ (literally ‘fine bush’), a rich terrain of wildflowers and grasses. We wasted no time in taking the winding trail around the lower slopes of the nearby mountain, surprising a baboon and a duiker (like a springbok) and observing a sleepy snake by the path.

Throw myself into the spirit of the place

That night the Blue Gum Lodge lost its power for a while, so we ate a delicious dinner by candlelight and were almost disappointed when the power came back on. People flock to this coast to go whale-watching.

At Hermanus we waited somewhat anxiously in a sparkling bay for whales to appear and then suddenly there they were – a huge mother and her calf basking close to shore.

Later, the owner of the Blue Gum, Nic Rhodes, told us that tourism, properly and justly organised, may be one route to success for this ‘rainbow nation’ with so many social problems.

He trains all his staff and is prepared to sell 25 per cent of the business to the black staff to help them prosper. It was hard to leave Blue Gum but the road beckoned again.

We agreed that anybody would want a week in the Franschhoek area and another around Hermanus, but now we had a five-and-a-half-hour haul to Plettenberg Bay. On the way, we took a detour, bumping along a 30-mile stretch of dirt road to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa.

It’s an essential photo opportunity and the lighthouse, second oldest in South Africa, is interesting in itself. Heading east past lovely Mossel Bay, you reach that verdant, scenic stretch of coastline known as the Garden Route.

Plettenberg Bay, or Plett as it’s known, is a smart little resort town, combining mountain scenery, white sand and blue water.

After dipping my toes in the Indian Ocean, we drove a further ten miles to our next hotel, another delight. Hog Hollow proved to be both exotic and entertaining. The hotel comprises a cluster of wooden cabins, supported on stilts because of the steep nature of the site.

Each has a terrace, with ham-mock, overlooking a valley where monkeys whoop in the trees. For breakfast you walk to the main house and choose from a delicious spread on the terrace.

And dinner? When I heard it was at communal tables my heart sank. Staff said we could ask for a separate table but on our first night the couple who had chosen

that option looked truly lonely and anti-social.

I knew I had to throw myself into the spirit of the place. When dinner was called, we sat at two long tables and were all amazed by the Hog Hollow party piece.

Each night a different member of staff stands for the formal welcome and introduces each guest by their first name in order!

And I can honestly say that on both nights the communal dining experience was really enjoyable because it was great to talk to new people – in this case Dutch, German and English visitors.

It was an incredible adventure

The next day we devoted to wildlife but viewed within the easy surroundings of magnificent sanctuaries. Monkeyland and Birds of Eden, run by the same company, are fascinating and thrilling in equal measure because you can get close to creatures you would never normally see in an environment that is near to their natural habitat. For the day-long drive to Cape Town we took the inland route, R62, avoiding the beautiful but crowded coastal road.

It was an incredible adventure – a dirt road threading through mostly uninhabited mountains, with dark forests unfolding into bare wild tracts of land.

We had come full circle. That night, sitting on our balcony at Les Cascades, one of Cape Town’s boutique hotels, we missed the sights and sounds of the countryside. But we were about to spend a busy week in this wonderful laidback city, and suspected this was just the beginning of a love affair with this beautiful land.