South Africa Guide
The Western Cape
The most mountainous and arguably the most beautiful of South Africa's provinces, the Western Cape is also the most popular area of the country for foreign tourists. Curiously, it's also the least African province. Visitors spend weeks here without exhausting its attractions, but frequently leave slightly disappointed, never having quite experienced an African beat. Of South Africa's nine provinces, only the Western Cape and the Northern Cape don't have an African majority; one person in five here is African, and the largest community, making up 55 percent of the population, are coloureds – people of mixed race descended from white settlers, indigenous Khoisan people and slaves from the East. Although the Western Cape appears to conform more closely to the developed world than any other part of the country, the impression is strictly superficial. Beneath the prosperous feel of the Winelands and the Garden Route lies a reality of developing-world poverty in squatter camps on the outskirts of well-to-do towns, and on some farms where nineteenth-century labour practices prevail, despite the end of apartheid.
Nevertheless, you can't fail to be moved by the sensuous physical beauty of the province's mountains, valleys and beaches. The Winelands, less than an hour from Cape Town, give full reign to the sybaritic pleasures of eating, drinking and visual feasting. Dutch colonial heritage reaches its peak in this region of gabled homesteads sitting among vineyards against a backdrop of slaty crags.
The best-known feature of the Western Cape is the Garden Route, a drive along the N2 that technically begins at Mossel Bay, where the freeway hits the coast, and continues east for 185km to Storms River..
Highlights
1 The Winelands Quaff fine vintages on some of South Africa's most beautiful wine estates.
2 Route 62 This mountainous inland route takes you through dozy villages, across spectacular passes and through semi-desert.
3 De Hoop Nature Reserve Massive dunes and edge-to-edge whales in season make this arguably the most exciting provincial nature reserve in the county.
4 Ocean safaris at Plettenberg Bay Learn about whales and dolphins on an excursion around Plettenberg Bay.
5 Canopy Tour at Tsitsikamma National Park Swing from tree to tree among the highest boughs of the Tsitsikamma Forest's arboreal giants.
6 Storms River Mouth One of the most dramatic sections of coast, where hillside forests drop away to rocky coastline and the Storms River surges out of a gorge into the thundering ocean.
7 Oudrif An exceptional and remote retreat lodge on the edge of a gorge in the dry and dramatic redstone back country of the Cederberg.