Cape Winelands & The Garden Route

Fly overnight from London Heathrow to Cape Town.

On arrival, transfer to the 4-star Pepper Club Hotel (Protea Hotel Waterfront Breakwater for 2025) for a three-night stay. Filling the gap between Table Mountain and the ocean, multi-faceted Cape Town enjoys the beauty of bountiful nature and adds to it in style. Perhaps take a stroll on its long Atlantic Seaboard, stretching from the vibrant V&A Waterfront to Sea Point Promenade, and seek out superb eateries where soul-food meets seafood.      

A coastal tour takes you via the village of Hout Bay and Chapman’s Peak Drive, to the sheer cliffs of Cape Point, encompassing the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve with its mountain zebras and hundreds of bird species, and offering spectacular ocean views, particularly from the Flying Dutchman Funicular to the lighthouse (funicular ticket payable locally). Continue to visit Boulders Beach, famed for its colony of penguins, and the South African Naval Museum in Simon’s Town. This evening, enjoy a Pan-African experience of cuisine and entertainment at the renowned Gold Restaurant, where dinner is accompanied by traditional drumming.
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A full day of exploration takes in the highlights of cosmopolitan Cape Town, including the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, and a walk through Company Gardens to the South Africa Museum; Table Mountain (weather permitting - excludes cableway ticket), and the 17th-century Castle of Good Hope, South Africa’s oldest surviving building. The tour includes a harbour cruise, and a special treat of afternoon tea at the famous Mount Nelson Hotel, an oasis of calm in the heart of the city, with the elegance of a bygone age.
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Travel the Route 62 ‘wine road’ to Oudtshoorn (6hrs), part of the Cape Floral Heritage Site, where old churches mingle with the ‘feather palace’ mansions of merchants who made their wealth from ostrich feathers. Visits en route includes the CP Nel Museum, focused on the Karoo culture and historic ostrich trade; and the spectacular Cango Caves, their limestone caverns millions of years old. Two nights at the 3-star Protea Hotel Riempie Estate. 
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A dramatic ascent of the Swartberg Pass, by special vehicle, takes you to the Ou Tolhuis base of the H.O.P.E Foundation for conservation and social upliftment; returning to the foot of the mountain for a Karoo “farmers’ lunch” in rural Prince Albert; followed by a wine tasting, and a visit to the Meiringspoort Great Waterfall, streaming down sixty metres of a smoothed-rock ravine.
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Cross the super-scenic Outeniqua Pass to visit the Transport Museum in George, celebrating the railway and the age of steam with locomotives, carriages, and a photo gallery; and continue to the Garden Route town of Knysna, where a gap between the Knysna Head cliffs allows the sea to crash into its lagoon. Enjoy a sunset cruise on the lagoon. Two nights at the 3-star Moorings Hotel.
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Explore the indigenous forests of coastal Tsitsikamma National Park, and visit the vibrant resort of Plettenberg Bay, its white sands, blue waters and green mountain surrounds epitomising the Garden Route.
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At Mossel Bay, visit the Bartholomeu Diaz Museum complex, with its legendary ‘Post Office Tree’, a milkwood tree, used as a mailbox since the Middle Ages; continue to Hermanus, where Southern Right Whales are often sighted close to shore between June and November; and complete your journey to the Cape Winelands and the small town of Franschhoek, encircled by some of South Africa’s finest vineyards, for three nights at the 4-star Le Franschhoek Hotel & Spa.
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A morning tour takes you first to Stellenbosch, the centre of the South African wine industry, with a Village Museum of period houses depicting its Dutch colonial origins; and continues to the Huguenot Memorial to the French refugee settlers, before enjoying a wine tasting at Stark Conde, and a light lunch and wine tasting at the Eikendal wine estate.
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A leisurely day lets you explore picturesque Franschhoek at your own pace, its tree-shaded streets sprinkled with curio shops, galleries, and restaurants. With your morning and afternoon free, the two are punctuated by a wine tasting visit to the Delaire Graff estate; and we round-off the day with a special dinner at the hotel this evening.
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Return to Cape Town and to the Pepper Club Hotel for a two-night stay. Recording the lives and times described in Nelson Mandela’s ‘No Easy Road to Freedom’ speech, a tour takes you to the city’s District Six, the former vibrant hub of diversity, destroyed under Apartheid; and visits the museum, with exhibits explaining the district’s history, and an ethos of rebuilding a multi-cultural community. Continue to the townships, with local community guides, to experience the contrast between the up-tempo heart of Cape Town and its impoverished enclaves.
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Take the boat from the Victoria & Albert Waterfront to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years imprisonment, and which now describes its museum as a symbol of ‘the triumph of the human spirit over adversity and injustice’.
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Time at leisure until transfer to the airport for your overnight return flight to London; or fly via Johannesburg to Victoria Falls for a four-night extension to the holiday.
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Morning arrival in London.