South Africa

South Africa calls itself the "Rainbow Nation": more than ten official languages coexist, and Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaner and other cultures interweave in music, dress and festivals. Cape Town nestles beneath Table Mountain, where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. South Africans love the outdoors, and the braai (barbecue) is the core ritual of weekend socialising: the host chats around the grill while the aroma of boerewors (South African sausage) and pap (maize porridge) drifts everywhere. Jazz and amapiano dance music travelled from here to the world; rugby and cricket are a national language that crosses ethnic lines, and in World Cup years the sound of the vuvuzela once echoed around the globe. Cape Town's Malay community is known for its brightly coloured houses and its spice-rich Cape Malay curries.

South Africa is in the southern hemisphere, so its seasons are the reverse of the northern hemisphere's. Summer (November to March) is hot; Cape Town is dry and windy, good for the Cape of Good Hope and a Garden Route road trip, but the northern savanna is in its rainy season and mosquitoes increase. Winter (May–August) is the golden season for game viewing — the grass is dry and yellow, animals gather at water sources, and visibility around Kruger is at its best — while Cape Town enters its rainy winter. In spring (September–October) the West Coast wildflower season is brief and brilliant, as Namaqualand's desert blooms into a sea of flowers; the Hermanus whale season runs roughly from June to November, when southern right whales play close to shore — one of the few places in the world for land-based whale watching. Summer is also the liveliest season at the penguin beach on the Cape Peninsula.

South Africa's human story is written in suffering and reconciliation: from San rock art and the Zulu kingdom, through colonial contests and the apartheid system, to Mandela walking out of Robben Island prison and the first universal-suffrage election of 1994 — the very name "Rainbow Nation" is itself an aspiration. The stories of Archbishop Tutu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission make this a classroom for understanding the politics of forgiveness. South Africa has three capital cities and some of the world's oldest rocks; Kruger's "Big Five" — lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and buffalo — together with the fynbos vegetation unique to the Cape Floral Kingdom, make it one of the ultimate destinations for nature travellers. The "Cradle of Humankind" sites in Gauteng, which have yielded abundant early human fossils, are likewise inscribed as World Heritage.

Rainbow Nation, the Big Five, Table Mountain, Mandela

Table Mountain and the Cape of Good Hope in Cape Town, a Kruger National Park safari, a Garden Route road trip, whale watching in Hermanus, Robben Island

• South Africa tourism board
• Wikipedia: South Africa