For decades, South Africa was our all-in-one, no-visa-required way of sampling the continent (you know the trip: game viewing, wine tasting, and beachgoing all in two weeks). But new openings and infrastructure overhauls are luring us beyond the country’s borders to neighbors like Mozambique and Zimbabwe, which has rebounded from its slump in the mid-aughts when support for conservation and tourism by President Robert Mugabe’s government dried up. The recently expanded Victoria Falls International Airport means you can easily catch the packs and prides of relatively less-touristed Hwange National Park with none of the jeep jams you find in Kruger, while once-rugged Mozambique now has two super-luxe island properties.
Here’s how we’d do the new blowout trip.
Start with City and Surf
Cape Town has become something like the Sydney of Africa, with dramatic coastlines hugging a thoroughly modern city and a strong design and food game. Check in to the new Silo Hotel that literally sits atop the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, which will be the buzziest thing on the continent when it opens in September. (Request a suite overlooking Cape Town’s Table Mountain, the backdrop of pretty much every visitor’s photos.) It’s on the V&A Waterfront, which, sure, is a bit like staying on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, but it’s fast becoming a creative hub, with the newly renovated Watershed marketplace selling designs from more than 300 local artisans. You’re also near the ferry to Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela served most of his 27-year sentence (tours are poignantly guided by former inmates).
You can easily spend two days eating and drinking your way through the city: We’re talking a pulled-confit-pork omelet for breakfast at Solo, the new café in downtown’s 99 Loop Gallery, before checking out the Adriaan Diedericks sculptures next door. From here you’re a walk from the concept store Opulent Living, which stocks homegrown luxury brands like Trebene cashmere and rose-gold jewelry from Verus. Hop a 10-minute cab to Woodstock, an emerging neighborhood with detour-worthy street art, for a dinner of seared duck and chamomile ice cream at chef Luke Dale-Roberts’s revamped The Test Kitchen.
On day three, take the 36-mile coastal drive to Cape Peninsula, passing jagged cliffs that straddle the Indian and Atlantic oceans and stopping at surfing beaches like Muizenberg, which draws a cool boho crowd, and Boulders Beach, with its colony of adorably clumsy African penguins. Get back to Cape Town by sunset, which you should catch on Table Mountain (it’s a two-hour hike to the top, but no judgment if you take the cable car).
Next Up: Driving and Drinking
South African chardonnay beat out Napa’s to win a Decanter World Wine Award last year, and heading to the Franschhoek region means you’ll sip it in colonial farmhouses, baboons playing nearby. From Cape Town, hire a driver for the hour-long ride east to the year-old Leeu House, your base for two days of tossing back chenin blanc and chards between the township’s 50 or so wineries. Don’t skip Leeu’s neatly manicured younger sister, Leeu Estates, or Babylonstoren, a 17th-century farmhouse turned hotel, for a lunch of grilled lamb and garden tomatoes at its lush Babel Restaurant.
Time for Some Surreal Nature
From Cape Town it’s a two-hour flight to the Victoria Falls Airport for two nights at the colonial-era Victoria Falls Hotel. Drop your bags and order a Pimm’s at Stanley’s Bar, where warthogs run free near the terrace. Walk the rim of the 355-foot falls for photos of the crashing waters (or have a helicopter float you over the top, from $175), then head to the calmer side of the Zambezi for a river cruise in Zambia. You’ll get your first taste of Africa’s epic wildlife at Hwange National Park, an hour’s drive away (leave by dawn to catch giraffes and zebras before the midday sun sends them to sleep). For the next few days you’ll stay at the newish Somalisa Camp, where you can dust off in the pool next to an elephant watering hole between game drives. A bush plane on day three will bring you to Mana Pools National Park on the Zambezi flood plains, known for elephant, hippo, and croc sightings. There, you’ll sleep in canopied king beds at Wilderness Safaris’ canvas-tented Ruckomechi Camp.
And Now You Can Stop Moving
From there it’s two short flights to Johannesburg, where you’ll connect to Vilankulos, on Mozambique’s southern coast. The area recently entered the luxury travel game with the reopening of andBeyond Benguerra Island, a cluster of Portuguese-African-style casinhas and cabanas on an untrammeled coastline (each suite has a plunge pool). Play castaway, snorkeling off of your own stretch of sand, then rejoin humanity for sundowners under the sails of Benguerra’s private dhow.
Everything Else You Need to Know
Days: 14
When To Go: November to March.
Book with: Deborah Calmeyer, ROAR Africa, or Julian Harrison, Premier Tours.
Pre-Trip Prep
You’ll need a visa for Mozambique in advance but you can get one for Zim upon arrival. Be sure to land with seven blank passport pages (for visas and stamps from all three countries). At Zim, request the double-entry visa; if you want to enter Zambia for that cruise (which you will), you won’t have to pay to re-enter.
Insider Intel
"We Cape Towners do our Sunday sundown-ers at the Paris-style Grand Africa Café, on the edge of the V&A Waterfront, where you have the white sands of Granger Bay all around you.” —Lukhanyo Mdingi, fashion designer
The Bottles to Bring Back
Tinashe Nyamudoka, the head sommelier at Cape Town’s standout The Test Kitchen, tells us the South African wines he’s most excited about right now: Opstal Estate Carl Everson Chenin Blanc, Neethlingshof the Owl Post Pinotage, and Stark-Condé Cabernet Sauvignon.
Instead of Zim, Try This
For a major landscape change, veer north from South Africa to Namibia. Track elephants along the eerie Skeleton Coast (so-called for all the whale bones) and road-trip to the haunting sand dunes of Sossus-vlei before dropping poolside at the new Chobe Water Villas resort. Book via Mark Nolting, the Africa Adventure Co.
BOOK WITH: Deborah Calmeyer, ROAR Africa, or Julian Harrison, Premier Tours.
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