South Africa

The Western Cape and Cederberg mountains are areas of South Africa that I first explored in 2018, when I was living in Botswana. Just a couple of hours drive from Cape Town, they are, as yet, relatively unspoilt. This three centre tour offers a wide range of subjects from the remote and grand Cederberg range to the dunescapes of the west coast.

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We start the tour with a day and night in Cape Town. This is one of the most spectacularly sited cities in the world. This vibrant metropolis offers many photographic possibilities but a "new kid on the block" is particularly enthralling. The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art looks like many other dockside buildings but has an incredible interior, carved from grain silos. Table Mountain dominates every view. Weather permitting, we will take the cable car up onto the plateau and spend some time exploring this "lost world". The views over the city, the oceans and toward the Twelve Apostles are incredible.

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Our next base is Paternoster. This once quaint fishing village is now mostly holiday homes for Capetonians. It does, however, have amazing beaches and wonderfully sculpted granite outcrops. Dawn and dusk photography is less than a minute's walk from our base in a quiet part of the village. Our visit is timed so that we can also photograph the wildflower blooms that thickly carpet the dunes of the nearby West Coast National Park in August.

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After three nights on the coast we will drive inland to the Cederberg Mountain Wilderness for another three night stay. Sadly this region has suffered from a number of bush fires in recent years but the broad high valleys and wildly eroded hoodoos are still amazing places to photograph. We will trek for a few miles each day to reach the most interesting locations. The vegetation and weirdly eroded rocks give the area an otherworldly feel. We may be lucky and see some snow on the higher peaks. Our base here is on one of South Africa's highest wineries; so we will be forced to try out some wine after all the exertions of the day.

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And then we will leave the wilderness behind and return to the Cape Town area. Staying south of the city, on the shore of False Bay, we will visit the iconic rugged Cape of Good Hope and the African penguin colony at Boulder Beach.

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Our flight back to the UK is the following evening, arriving early in the morning on the 23rd of August.

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