South Africa Motorcycle Tour

Eight nights round South Africa’s south-west, guided, from Cape Town on a BMW or Yamaha adventure bike.

The variety is the selling point and it is not an exaggeration: oceans, mountain passes, semi-desert and wine country all fall inside six days of riding from one city.

Cape Town opens it for three nights beneath Table Mountain. Chapman’s Peak Drive is the first ride and a destination in itself, cut into the cliffs with the Atlantic breaking below and the red and orange strata above. The Cape of Good Hope follows, then Clarence Drive east along the coast, which is as good a stretch of coastal road as the country has, to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa, where the two oceans meet. The mountain passes then lead inland into the Karoo, a semi-arid plateau of vast silence and remarkable night skies, with a night at a luxury lodge in the largest game reserve in the country. The return runs along Route 62, the southern hemisphere’s answer to Route 66, through historic towns and the Cape wine regions.

Three nights in a four-star Cape Town hotel, two in sea-view hotels with pools, three in small-town boutique hotels, six days of BMW F 900 GS or Yamaha Tenere 700 rental, a local guide, a back-up van with mechanical support and spares, and an experienced operator guide are all included. The price shown is the starting rate. Late January is the departure, which is high summer there and the best of the Cape’s weather. No wildlife sighting can be promised at the reserve, whatever the odds. Nine days for that much contrast is well judged, and Chapman’s Peak alone justifies the first morning.