South Africa Road Trip (Fixed Departure)

Nine nights along the South African coast, self-driven in convoy with crew support, out of Cape Town.

The Cape is the right place to start a road trip in Africa: the roads are good, the distances between the stops are modest, and the peninsula alone holds some of the best coastal driving anywhere.

Cape Town opens it, then the Cape of Good Hope, where the two currents meet in a way that has wrecked ships for five centuries and gave rise to the legend of the Flying Dutchman, the ghost ship said to be still trying to round it. Hermanus follows, where shark cage diving goes out from the coast and southern right whales come into the bay between July and November. Cape Agulhas comes next, the southernmost point of Africa and by convention the dividing line between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, though the real boundary is a good deal less tidy than the signpost suggests. The full day-by-day itinerary was not available on the operator’s page.

The format is a self-drive convoy with crew support around the clock; the detailed inclusions were not itemised on the page and are worth confirming at booking, and 5 per cent GST and 2 per cent TCS are added to the trip cost. The price shown is per person. No wildlife sighting can be promised, sharks or whales. July to November pairs the whale season with reasonable driving weather, while the Cape summer from December to March is warmer and busier.