Sweeping views of a mist-shrouded coastline. Tiny, adorable penguins on a perfect, white sand beach. A safari trip that more than surpassed my expectations.Like many visitors, my main objective in taking the long flight from North America to South Africa was to see African animals in the wild. The folks at Goway Travel hooked my wife up with three days at the Kambaku River Sands in the greater Kruger National Park area, and it was magical; an up-close and personal experience with majestic lions, baby elephants and rabbit-stalking leopards not ten yards from our open-air jeep. Okay, that’s not quite true; the leopard was actually close enough that I could’ve reached down and grabbed its tail. The safari was a magical three days. What surprised me the most was the nature and beauty I discovered all around Cape Town and the Winelands district just north of the city; jagged, towering mountains that march alongside endless beaches, a majestic coastal drive along the Cape of Good Hope and lush, green vineyards surrounded by 5,000-foot-high peaks of ancient rock. PHOTO: A view of Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. (photo via G Adventures) Cape Town’s V and A Waterfront is sleek and stylish, with several upscale hotels, a huge Ferris Wheel called The Cape Wheel, a massive indoor shopping mall, outdoor shops and a harbour that offers everything from whale watching cruises to pirate-themed rides. There’s also a fine aquarium.There was nearly constant entertainment, including wonderful African singers and dance troupes that always drew big crowds to the area around the Cape Wheel. It seemed to be packed 24 hours a day.My wife and I wandered a few yards down the road from the Victoria and Alfred Hotel and found the city’s Hop-On/Off Bus depot. We bought tickets for the Red Line tour and enjoyed a terrific, open-air tour of the city. We stopped briefly at the colorful Bo Kaap area, where you’ll find a number of mosques and houses in shades of bright lime green, Pepto Bismol pink, French’s Mustard yellow and other vibrant shades.We also cruised past stunning beaches and fashionable waterfront neighborhoods, which I hadn’t heard of before. Our tour guide said that, back in the day, some of the beach areas were considered too far away from town and were undesirable. The city was so desperate to get people to settle outside the downtown that some folks were paid to move out to the beach to houses that now command a million dollars or more. Some even call the region “Millionaire’s Paradise.” Amazing. PHOTO: A slice of the South African near Cape Town. (Photo by Jim Byers) Like most travelers, I had heard of Table Mountain and wanted very much to take the gondola to the top. I expected great views of the city, and I had them. But what I didn’t realize is that the view also includes the city’s coastline, rocky cliffs that drop straight down and distant views of the Cape of Good Hope.Another thing that struck me about Cape Town is that it’s quite reasonably priced. I went out for a pizza one night and paid less than $9 USD for a very large pizza piled high with tasty Parma ham and arugula. A nice glass of wine at a pretty sidewalk café was just 45 South African Rand, about $3 USD.We didn’t go out for any fancy meals, instead saving money by dining at V and A waterfront places for Italian food and a good burger place called Gibson’s.We didn’t have time to check out some of the nearby seaside villages, such as Hermanus. And we didn’t make it to Robben Island, a historic prison site where Nelson Mandela spent many of his years in captivity. But we did manage a terrific Cape of Good Hope peninsula tour that went on almost all day. PHOTO: Boulders Beach Penguins, South Africa. (Photo by Jim Byers) We toured past beautiful seaside villages that looked like Malibu or La Jolla in California, with posh shops and stunning beaches. The mountains here are quite close to the coast, so it’s a very dramatic look.One of our first stops was to take a boat ride to check out an island packed to the hilt with barking, raucous sea lions near Hout Bay.MORE Destination & Tourism From there we made our way along one of the world’s most dramatic driving roads, Chapman’s Peak Drive. I’d never heard of it, but it’s even more striking and dramatic than Highway One in California or the famous Road to Hana on Maui, with narrow, curving roads carved out of jagged brown rocks high above the blue ocean. Spectacular, and then some.From there it was over to the other side of the cape to see a huge colony of African penguins at Boulders Beach, just outside Simon’s Town. I had no idea there were penguins in South Africa, but the beach here is filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of them. If there’s a more adorable animal in the world, I haven’t seen it.My wife and I, and pretty much everyone within sight, was mesmerized by these tiny critters, who waddled back and forth along the sand for a half-hour while we stood and watched. Every once in awhile, one of them would decide it was time for a swim, and a group of five to 20 of the little guys would suddenly make an awkward, penguin-style dash for the ocean and then dive into the blue-green waves.After a nice lunch at an outdoor café, we wandered down to Cape of Good Hope National Park, where we posed for the requisite photos at the Cape of Good Hope sign and looked around. We also spotted baboons off in the distance and, at the side of the road, maybe five feet from our bus, a massive ostrich.Our guide, Robbie Maretekway, said there are roughly 350 troops of baboons in the park, each with 15-35 animals.“They can certainly ruin a picnic,” he said with a smile. PHOTO: Dias Beach, South Africa. (Photo by Jim Byers) Our bus dropped us off at the bottom of a hill next to the New Cape Point Lighthouse. Some folks opted to walk up the hill to check it out, but I decided to wander about near the bus. And I was so glad I did, as I discovered a stunning coastal trail that winds down to one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen, Dias beach, which was named for Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias, who came this way in 1488 (and whose relatives probably wish he’d invested in local real estate). The sand is a brilliant shade of white and there are weathered, eroded “haystack” hills that folks can climb and take photos of for great Instagram shots.On the way back to our hotel we stopped for an hour at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, which is on the backside of Table Mountain from downtown. It’s a massive garden that dates back 106 years and features everything from amazing, South African proteas to pale yellow and blue birds of paradise; a striking contrast to the orange and blue ones most of us probably know.Our tour guide pointed out beautiful, exotic trees and flowers all around us, and we admired some odd-looking ducks and other birds as we walked. There’s a huge lawn area and a concert stage where they do musical performances with Table Mountain as a backdrop, and it looks like an unforgettable concert spot. PHOTO: Anthonij Rupert Wines in Franschhoek, South Africa. (Photo by Jim Byers) One of the great advantages of Cape Town is that it's only an hour from the country's best vineyards. We had two nights at the Franschhoek Country House and Villas in the village of Franschhoek. The town runs for several blocks and features handsome hotels, art galleries and shops selling South African and French-made products, Franschhoek meaning "French Hook" in English.There’s a monument to the French Huguenot settlers (Protestants who weren’t welcome in Catholic France) who came here in the 1600s at one end of the village, and the town is dotted with names such as Villefranche and Place Vendome. You’ll find tri-color French flags all about. PHOTO: Shopping in Franschhoek, South Africa. (Photo by Jim Byers) One fun way to experience wine country in the Franschhoek area is to take the open-air wine tram, which takes you up and down the valley and stops at a variety of wineries. It costs about 240 Rand (roughly $16), but you pay for your wine at each stop.Our hotel suggested we instead try a private tour, which cost us about $45 each and took us to four wineries and included samples. So, that’s what we did.As it turned out, we only had time for three wineries, but we had large samples at each (at least six at each winery and I think eight or nine at the first one) and had a driver who talked about the area and the wines at length. I think we also got to stop at more interesting wineries and had far more of a personal experience than folks would get on the tram.Admittedly, it was a Monday in spring and not a summer weekend, but we saw four other visitors at the first winery we went to and not a soul at the other two. At all three places, we sat outside in a shady spot and sampled large amounts of wine while chatting up experienced winery workers. It was nothing like the wine experiences I’ve had in California, where you sometimes have to elbow your way to the bar and are lucky to get five or ten words out of the winery folks.Our first stop was Moreson, which makes exceptional sparkling wine and some very nice whites and reds. We sat a picnic table with four other visitors and sampled at least eight or ten varieties while chatting with one of the senior staff, Herman Koegelenberg.It’s cooler here than in nearby Stellenbosch or Paarl, so sparkling wines do extremely well. They also make several styles of Chardonnay, ranging from buttery and round to lean and crisp. PHOTO: Herman Koegelenberg at Moreson Wine Farm in South Africa. (Photo by Jim Byers) Some winery folks can be a little on the uppity side. Not Koegelenberg. When he was talking about how yeast interacts with the wine, he described at as hungry yeast critters “farting and pooping and doing their thing with the sugars.”I stifled a laugh, and Koegelenberg smiled.“Well,” he said. “That’s basically what it is.”Our next stop was the Anthonij Rupert Wine Estate a huge estate that I was told reaches some 700 hectares and includes vineyards, an olive grove, a vintage automobile showcase, a rose garden and a beautiful home with posh furnishings and a lovely outdoor patio. We sat outside on the patio and tasted a half-dozen wines, gazing out at a lawn that was roughly the size of several football fields, and with a view of the Franschhoek mountains all around. And there wasn’t another tourist in sight.The Cabernet Franc was rich and delicious, with a solid nod towards the great blends of Bordeaux. Their Sauvignon Blanc was fruity and crisp at the same time and felt like something halfway between a California Sauv Blanc and one from New Zealand.Our final winery was a small place called Lynx. They used to grow table grapes but found they were being undercut by low prices, so they switched to making wine a couple decades back. PHOTO: A Franschhoek, South Africa sunset from Roca Restaurant. (Photo by Jim Byers) It’s a very low-key, quiet place overlooking a valley lined with pretty hills. There were no other visitors when we were there, and the only thing we heard over the space of an hour was the distant whir of a power mower and a flock of birds out in the vineyards.The Blanc de Noir is only about $6 and goes down very easy. The resident wine expert, Jason, smiled and called it a “very dangerous wine.”I also enjoyed the fruity, floral Viognier and the slightly spicy Shiraz, which we purchased to have back in Toronto for a back yard barbeque next summer.On our last night, we had dinner at ROCA Restaurant, located high in a hotel near our hotel. The food was good, the wine excellent and the setting extraordinary. The restaurant has a lovely lawn area with sweeping views of the valley that are quite remarkable. On top of that, we were treated to a sensational sunset.The safaris out of Kambaku River Sands lodge were amazing. We saw baby elephants puffing up their shoulders and pretending they were tough teenagers defending their turf, as well as packs of zebras, hundreds of antelope, hippos wallowing in muddy ponds, curious hyenas and towering giraffe silhouetted by an African moon at sunset.Our first morning out we spotted a pride of lions; three females and a male lying in a thicket of small trees. One of the females clearly had blood on her paws, our guide pointed out. PHOTO: Kambaku River Sands Guides South Africa. (Photo by Jim Byers) The first time you’re in an open-air jeep with nothing between you and your surroundings and your driver/guide pulls up 30 feet from a group of lions, your stomach does a bit of a double-clutch. When he turns off the engine, your heart goes boomity-boom.“Don’t worry,” our guide, J.J.Ooosthuizen, told us. “they don’t care about us whatsoever. They just fed. It’s day-time. All they want to do now is sleep.”He seemed right about that, as they barely looked our way during our 15 or 20-minute visit.It got even better on our second night, when Oosthuizen and our tracker, Renias Mathebula, spotted a leopard on a small hill in a dry river valley. We turned our jeep around to follow the cat as it tracked what we were told was probably a small rabbit lurking in the bushes.It was pitch dark by now, so Oosthuizen trained a flashlight on the ground, being careful not to get the light in the leopard’s eyes. He or she (I didn’t stop to ask) slowly circled behind our Jeep. A couple of seconds later I looked down in the beam of the flashlight and saw the leopard, which was maybe six feet from my hand.Truly amazing. PHOTO: Rhinos near Kambaku River Sands Lodge, South Africa. (Photo by Jim Byers) Not only did we see the Big Five during our visit, but we also spotted monkeys, civets, wildebeest and more.Oosthuizen gave us tons of interesting information at every turn.“The hippos eat grass, grass and more grass,” he said. “They feed at night. Their skin is very sensitive so they spend their days submerged in the water.”“See that wildebeest? They have temporal glands in their faces. They rub their face on the tree to show they’ve been here.”Oosthuizen also had some fun along the way. At one point he insisted he can smell 14 types of animals from a distance. Later he told a young visitor that one of the elephants we’re admiring is named Thumper because he “likes to kick the jeep.”On a more serious note, he pointed out dozens of bird species as we rolled along through the dry grass; eagles, hawks, electric blue, pink and purple lilac-breasted rollers. He also talked about the rhinos we saw. But it’s not a pleasant story.“They are hunted and killed for their horns,” he told us. “It’s a huge problem. And it's very sad.”Oosthuizen said conservationists sometimes tranquilize the rhinos and clip off part of their horns. It makes them look strange, and it reduces their ability to fight, but it doesn’t hurt them and it means poaches are less likely to kill them just to get the horns, which are turned into a powder and sold in various parts of the world as a medicinal product.One morning we were near the lodge and spotted a pack of wild dogs running down the road. Oosthuizen and Mathebula were almost beside themselves.“This is amazing,” Oosthuizen said. “There are maybe 400 in all of Kruger National Park and there are 35 or 40 in this group. You’re so lucky to see this.”On our last full day, I chatted up a gentleman visiting the lodge from Philadelphia.“It’s everything I thought it would be," he told me. "And more." Let's block ads! (Why?)