It’s a long journey to get to Capetown from Savannah, Georgia. Arrival was late at night but the airport was easy to navigate. The currency exchange counter was just steps away from where I needed to pick up luggage! And my hotel transportation was easy to find as I exited the airport!

Capetown is the second oldest city in South Africa. Considered the “Mother City” it is know for its harbor and its natural setting in the cape ‘flower” region. It’s most well know landmarks are Table Mountain and Cape Point. It is located on the shore of Table Bay and is the oldest urban area in the Western Cape, established in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company.

Table Mountain has near vertical cliffs with a flat topped summit. At 3300 feet high it has the highest elevation in the city. It, along with 2 other mountains, Devil’s Peak and Lion’s Head, form the city “bowl”. A cable car will take you close to the top of this mountain for stunning views of the “bowl”!

A visit to Capetown’s famous Victoria and Albert Waterfront is not to be missed. Lots of shopping including a large mall with many upscale stores and several markets sell almost anything one needs or wants! Restaurants, food trucks and other entertainment venues are sprinkled though out the area.

An afternoon spent at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens was very interesting with a lot of local proteas and other fynbos (small plants). It’s the first time I’ve visited a botanical garden were guests were encouraged to get off the paths, touch the plants and in some cases break off a piece to smell them!

The Cape Peninsula is a scenic, mountainous spine about 25 mile into the Atlantic Ocean ending at Cape Point and has breath taking scenery. There is a funicular that makes reaching the top of Cape Point easy. With views of the Cape Flats and False Bay to the east and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, one does not know where to look first! The drive through the Table Mountain National Park goes through vast areas of dunes and scrublands that contain fynbos. The diversity of the Fynbos Biome, more than 6000 species endemic to this area, is simply amazing! Here we also visited an African penguin colony at the Boulders Penguin Colony on Boulders Beach. I could spend hours watching these little Cape penguins, about 25 inches tall, in their “tuxedo” plumage!

A day trip out to the Winelands was perfect on the last day in the southern part of the country. It was a very rainy day, but it didn’t stop the small group tour I joined from enjoying the many tastings of wine. One of the most popular white varietals, Chenin Blanc, was light and crisp. My favorite red wine was a pinotage, a varietal that I was not familiar with, but also a very popular wine.

A fairly quick flight and I was up near the Krueger National park for a 4 day/3 night safari. The Greater Makalali Private Game preserve is northwest of the park, overlooking the Drankensberg mountain range in the Limpopo Province. It is small, relatively speaking, and along with the Piwa Wilderness Reserve consists of only 25,000 hectares (about 62,000 acres), but had no shortage of animals! Shadrick, the ranger who drove the keep I was assigned to was tenacious and was not going to let anyone leave camp without spotting the “big five” animals: lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants and Cape buffalo! Also spotted were some of my favorites: giraffes and zebras. I love all the colors and patterns of their fur, the strips and spots, unique to each animal! One very interesting thing about the Makalali Preserve is their buffalo program where the Cape buffalo being reintroduced are all disease-free.

The 5-star Makalali Main Lodge was small, newly built and somewhat contemporary and really fit the needs of our group. The staff was amazing and the food freshly prepared with many local ingredients. Especially fun are the coffee breaks in the bush during our morning drives where coffee was freshly made with a French press, served with a splash of Amarula and fresh bakery items. During the evening drives we had our “sundowners” an impromptu cocktail hour, again in the bush, watching the beautiful sunsets over the Drakensberg mountain range.

Next stop was on the tour was Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city. My visit gave me a much better understanding of horrors of apartheid and how instrumental Nelson Mandela was, in changing the South Africa government to be more inclusive of all of its people. I visited Nelson and Winnie Mandela’s house and the prison where Mandella spent many years as an inmate, after his release from Robben Island off the coast of Capetown, where he spent even more time. I had a walking tour in Soweto, where Mandela, and Desmond Tutu, another famous South African, were born. There are about 1.5 million people living in this area of mostly slums. Shacks, many made out out corrugated metal spread out for miles. An amazing site to see, but sad to think about how some people are forced to live.