Cape Town, Whales and Wildlife.

Travel: private transfer from the airport, about 25 minutes.

Morning. Your driver is waiting at arrivals with your name. No queues, no shuttle. Table Mountain fills the windscreen for most of the way in.

Afternoon. Check in and settle. If the flight was long, do nothing. The pool is there for exactly this.

Evening. A welcome dinner with your guide, who talks you through the days ahead and asks what you care about most, so the plan can bend to it.

Included

• Private airport transfer.
• Welcome dinner.

Worth knowing

• An early night. Tomorrow starts on the mountain.

Stay

A boutique hotel in Cape Town: a garden villa with a spa in the leafy southern suburbs, or a hotel on or beside the Sea Point promenade.

Meals

Dinner.

Travel: short drives in the city with your private guide.

Morning. Up the mountain by cableway while the air is still. From the top you see the whole peninsula you will drive tomorrow. If cloud or wind closes the summit, your guide swaps the day around: the mountain goes when the mountain is clear.

Afternoon. Down into the city. The painted houses and cobbled lanes of the Bo-Kaap, the Company’s Garden, and the stories that tie them together. Then free time at the V&A Waterfront.

Evening. At leisure. Your guide books a table if you want one.

Included

• Table Mountain cableway ticket.
• Private guide and vehicle for the day.

Worth knowing

• Kirstenbosch gardens if you would rather have trees than streets.
• The cableway closes for about two weeks of maintenance each winter, usually from late July. On those dates the view comes from Signal Hill instead.

Stay

As day 1.

Meals

Breakfast.

Travel: a full day loop of about 150 kilometres, with many stops.

Morning. Along the Atlantic coast and over Chapman’s Peak, one of the great coastal roads anywhere. On to the Cape of Good Hope reserve and the lighthouse at Cape Point, where the cliffs drop into open ocean.

Afternoon. Lunch in a working harbour town, then the African penguins at Boulders, a few steps from the sand. Home by the False Bay coast.

Evening. At leisure.

Included

• Private guide and vehicle.
• Entrance fees for the Cape of Good Hope reserve and the penguin colony.

Optional

• Lunch in the harbour (your guide knows where the fish is freshest).

Worth knowing

• Bring a jacket. The Point is windy on the calmest day.

Stay

As day 1.

Meals

Breakfast.

Travel: about two and three quarter hours in the day, in two legs.

Morning. Out to Stellenbosch, the second oldest town in the country: a walk under the oaks, a cellar tasting and lunch among the vines.

Afternoon. Down to the sea at Gordon’s Bay and along Clarence Drive, cut into the cliff above False Bay. Hermanus by late afternoon, and straight onto the cliff path above Walker Bay. From June to November southern right whales come in to calve, and the rocks are the place to watch for them, at times only thirty metres out. September and October are the peak, when a sighting is likely and never certain. Outside those months there are no whales, and the path and the coast are still the point.

Evening. Dinner on your own account, with the sea below.

Included

• Private guide and vehicle.
• A cellar tasting in Stellenbosch.
• Lunch on a wine estate.

Stay

A boutique hotel above Walker Bay in Hermanus.

Meals

Breakfast, lunch.

Travel: about four hours, with a stop in Swellendam.

Morning. A last look at the bay, then inland and east across the wheat fields of the Overberg. Coffee under the white gables of Swellendam, the third oldest town in the country. At Mossel Bay the road turns inland, into hills covered in fynbos.

Afternoon. At the lodge by early afternoon. Out with your ranger in an open vehicle as the day cools. Nothing here is kept apart: lion, elephant, rhino and buffalo roam the same 11,000 hectares of hills, and so do leopard, which nobody anywhere can promise you.

Evening. Dinner at the lodge, around the fire when the weather allows.

Included

• Private transfer.
• Afternoon game drive.
• Dinner at the lodge.

Worth knowing

• This is malaria free country. There are no tablets to think about until the Kruger.

Stay

A lodge on a free roaming Big Five reserve inland from Mossel Bay, a step up from the other stays.

Meals

Breakfast, dinner.

Morning. Out before sunrise, coffee in hand. On a free roaming reserve the animals are found, not shown: your ranger reads tracks and follows the alarm calls, and the finding is half of it.

Afternoon. Back for breakfast and the middle of the day at the lodge. Pool, deck, sleep. Out again as the light softens.

Evening. Dinner at the lodge. By now you know your ranger, and the questions get better.

Included

• Dawn and dusk game drives.
• All meals at the lodge.

Stay

As day 5.

Meals

Breakfast, lunch, dinner.

Travel: private transfer, about one hour.

Morning. One last drive at dawn, when the animals are moving. Then breakfast and the road down to George for your flight.

Afternoon. George has direct flights to Cape Town, about one hour, and to Johannesburg, about two hours.

Included

• Dawn game drive.
• Private transfer to the airport.

Worth knowing

• Book a flight that leaves after one in the afternoon.

Not included

• The flight from George.

Meals

Breakfast.