Two of our most popular tours, WJSO Johannesburg & Soweto orientation and WASO Apartheid Museum & Soweto, are combined to give visitors one full day to experience South Africa’s commercial and financial capital – Johannesburg – the City of Gold, known amongst locals as Egoli, Jozi or Jo’burg.

This tour provides a great opportunity to take a closer look at South Africa’s turbulent past, by combining a drive through Soweto with a visit to the Apartheid Museum, regarded as the pre-eminent museum in the world dealing with 20th century South Africa, at the heart of which is the story of apartheid. The Museum opened its doors in 2001 and here visitors can embark on a historical voyage of discovery, a personal exploration of the past that examines apartheid right up to the first democratic elections held in 1994. The tour of the museum lasts approximately two hours.

After an early-morning wake-up call, you set off on your morning game drive. Madikwe is one of South Africa’s largest sanctuaries and has a rich biodiversity of mammals, such as Africa’s Big Five, cheetah, wild dog, brown and spotted hyena, oryx, eland, springbok & ostrich. You return to the lodge for a mid-morning brunch. There is time between game drives to relax on the deck with a good book, do some bird-watching (Madikwe has more than 250 recorded species of bird) or, if you are feeling more energetic, do a game walk with your game ranger. High tea is served in the late afternoon, before you set off on an evening game drive through the untamed wilderness of the Kalahari Thornveld. The late evening is when predators are more active and it is also an opportunity to see animals such as aardvark and caracal. You return to the lodge for a safari cuisine dinner in the open-air boma.

A tour guide takes you on a city tour of one of the world’s most beautiful cities. You will visit the historic Castle and the Bo-Kaap Malay Quarter with its narrow cobbled streets and colourful mosques. You will also visit District Six, site of forced removals during the Apartheid era. You view the Houses of Parliament, the City Hall and the Slave Lodge and will enjoy a walk through the Company Gardens. Weather-permitting, you will ride the cable car up Table Mountain to enjoy the view over Cape Town and across Table Bay to Robben Island. If the weather is inclement, you will be taken on a scenic drive up Signal Hill. You are transferred to the Jetty at the V&A Waterfront where you board a ferry to Robben Island, once the prison where Nelson Mandela lived. You are met at Robben Island by an ex-prisoner and taken on a tour of the island. You then board the ferry back to the V&A Waterfront and back to your hotel later that afternoon.

You are collected from your hotel by a tour guide and taken on a drive along the Atlantic seaboard via glamorous Clifton to the quaint seaside village of Hout Bay. We continue via the scenic Chapman’s Peak Drive to Cape Point. Looking at this dramatic promontory jutting into the sea gives one an idea why early sailors nicknamed it the Cape of Storms. We then follow the coastline northwards via Simonstown, where you can visit the penguin colony of Boulders Beach. We also visit Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, which is dedicated to the extraordinary variety of plants found in the Cape Floral Kingdom. A leisurely drive through the leafy southern suburbs will bring us back to the city bowl in the late afternoon.

You are collected from the hotel this morning and are taken on a Full-day tour of the Cape Winelands, with its backdrop of majestic mountain ranges and lush valleys. We stop for wine tastings at a minimum of two wineries and you have the chance to purchase some of the wines you have tasted. We visit Stellenbosch, the “town of oaks” for a short guided tour of South Africa’s second oldest town.

A scenic drive over the Helshoogte Pass (Hell’s Heights) takes us to the Franschhoek Valley. French Huguenots settled in the Franschhoek Valley in the late seventeenth century, seeking refuge from religious persecution in Europe and bringing with them precious root-stock to establish the wine-growing industry in South Africa. After the tour you are dropped off at your hotel.