Cape Town Sojourn

A beautiful mix of natural and man-made pleasures, Cape Town is Africa’s treasure for good reason. This perfect post-safari sojourn yields a winning blend of top city sights, sophisticated dining, luscious winelands, and more.

Itinerary

DAYS 1 & 2 Cape Town and environs

Not much has changed in the intervening four centuries to undermine Sir Francis Drake’s praise of Cape Town’s situation as “the most stately thing and the fairest Cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth.” (Of course, the town on the Cape was yet to be, so the local Khoisan people had the natural spectacle all to themselves for another six decades or so before the Dutch arrived and began town-making.) We are fervent admirers of Cape Town and of the superb One&Only. Set on the high-spirited Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, the One&Only is a fine place to begin our explorations of this grand, cosmopolitan city.

From there we venture to the Cape Peninsula, a nature lover’s dream (its fynbos ecosystem is a unique bit of natural magic). We’ll look out at the somehow significant and stirring meeting of the Atlantic and Indian oceans, and we’ll head over to Boulders Beach, where the hoots of the peninsula’s baboons are replaced by the trills of penguins, who somewhat mysteriously set up shop here only a couple of decades ago. And we’ll stroll in the old-style streets of Simon’s Town before returning to the One&Only, where we’ll have dinner on our own (all meals on the Cape Town Sojourn extension are included except dinners).

DAY 3 Cape Town and the Winelands

A day of estate touring and wine tasting in the Winelands’ sunny and exuberantly fertile valleys tucked between towering, beautifully sculpted mountains laced with mist (to put it mildly). We’ll lunch at Delaire Estate, which houses a worldclass art collection, and we’ll have the chance to wander through some of the district’s resolutely quaint villages, like famous Franschhoek (“French corner” in Dutch, a small sign of the Western Cape Province’s multicultural history).

DAY 4 (OPTIONAL) Cape Town

We’ve slotted in an optional extra day in Cape Town on the principle that most people are quite reluctant to leave it. A ferry from the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront will take us across Table Bay to Robben Island for an instructive look at the prison where Nelson Mandela and former South African president Jacob Zuma were confined during the old apartheid government. And we’ll pay an inspirational visit to Micato-AmericaShare’s Red Hill Library and Community Centre in Cape Town.

DAY 5 Depart Cape Town