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For a fully detailed
itinerary - please e-mail us. This of necessity a very
brief description of the tour.
The boxes give a short
description of the site and why it has been declared a
World Heritage Site. |
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A visit to the very remote Richtersveld would need a
6 day safari before the main tour starts. Briefly the
itinerary would be:
- Day 1 - Arrive Johannesburg -
overnight.
- Day 2 - Early flight to Cape Town
- drive to Springbok - meet
"The
Safari Guys"
- overnight Springbok
- Day 3, 4 & 5 - From Springbok
into the Richtersveld Area - 3 nights camping
safari.
- Day 6 - Return to Springbok -
drive to Cape Town - overnight Cape Town
- Day 7 - as per Day 2 of main tour
starting with Table Mountain
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The 160,000 ha
Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical
Landscape
of dramatic mountainous desert in
north-western South Africa constitutes a
cultural landscape communally owned and
managed. This site sustains the semi-nomadic
pastoral livelihood of the Nama people,
reflecting seasonal patterns that may have
persisted for as much as two millennia in
southern Africa. It is the only area where
the Nama still construct portable rush-mat
houses (haru
om) and includes seasonal migrations
and grazing grounds, together with stock
posts. The pastoralists collect medicinal
and other plants and have a strong oral
tradition associated with different places
and attributes of the landscape. |
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World Heritage Sites Tour Itinerary |
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Day 1 |
Arrive Johannesburg International
Airport. Transfer to hotel. Overnight Johannesburg. |
| Day 2 |
Morning fly to Cape Town. Afternoon
tour to Table Mountain. Overnight Cape Town. |
| Day 3 |
Tour of the Cape Peninsular including
Cape Point. Overnight Cape Town. |
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A serial site – in the Cape Province, South
Africa – made up of eight protected areas,
covering 553,000 ha, the
Cape Floral
Region
is one of the richest areas for plants in
the world. It represents less than 0.5% of
the area of Africa but is home to nearly 20%
of the continent’s flora. The site displays
outstanding ecological and biological
processes associated with the Fynbos
vegetation, which is unique to the Cape
Floral Region. The outstanding diversity,
density and endemism of the flora are among
the highest worldwide. Unique plant
reproductive strategies, adaptive to fire,
patterns of seed dispersal by insects, as
well as patterns of endemism and adaptive
radiation found in the flora, are of
outstanding value to science. |
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| Day 4 |
Morning tour of Robben
Island - afternoon tour to Stellenbosch and visit a wine
farm for a tour and wine tasting. Overnight Cape Town |
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Robben Island
was used at various times between the 17th
and 20th centuries as a prison, a hospital
for socially unacceptable groups and a
military base. Its buildings, particularly
those of the late 20th century such as the
maximum security prison for political
prisoners, witness the triumph of democracy
and freedom over oppression and racism. |
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| Day 5 |
Fly to Durban. Afternoon city tour.
Overnight uMhlanga Rocks |
| Day 6 |
Depart uMhlanga and drive
to the Umfolozi Game Reserve. Spend the day game
viewing. Late afternoon continue on to St. Lucia.
Overnight St. Lucia. |
| Day 7 |
Early morning Whale
Watching Tour (in season). Return mid-morning. Afternoon Boat tour
on the St. Lucia estuary. Overnight St. Lucia. |
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The ongoing fluvial, marine and aeolian
processes in the
iSimangaliso
wetland area have produced a variety of
landforms, including coral reefs, long sandy
beaches, coastal dunes, lake systems,
swamps, and extensive reed and papyrus
wetlands. The interplay of the park's
environmental heterogeneity with major
floods and coastal storms and a transitional
geographic location between subtropical and
tropical Africa has resulted in exceptional
species diversity and ongoing speciation.
The mosaic of landforms and habitat types
creates breathtaking scenic vistas. The site
contains critical habitats for a range of
species from Africa's marine, wetland and
savannah environments. |
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| Day 8 |
Drive to Shakaland. Enjoy the show
and lunch. Late afternoon continue to Underberg.
Overnight. |
| Day 9 |
Full day tour up Sani Pass to
Lesotho. Overnight Underberg. |
| Day 10 |
Drive to Giant's Castle Nature
Reserve. Walk to view San Rock Art. Overnight Giant's
Castle. |
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The
uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park
has exceptional natural beauty in its
soaring basaltic buttresses, incisive
dramatic cutbacks, and golden sandstone
ramparts. Rolling high altitude grasslands,
the pristine steep-sided river valleys and
rocky gorges also contribute to the beauty
of the site. The site’s diversity of
habitats protects a high level of endemic
and globally threatened species, especially
birds and plants. This spectacular natural
site also contains many caves and
rock-shelters with the largest and most
concentrated group of paintings in Africa
south of the Sahara, made by the San people
over a period of 4,000 years. The rock
paintings are outstanding in quality and
diversity of subject and in their depiction
of animals and human beings. They represent
the spiritual life of the now extinct San
people. |
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| Day 11 |
Continue to Clarens via the The
Golden Gate National Park. Overnight Clarens. |
| Day 12 |
Morning drive to Vredefort. Afternoon
circular drive exploring the geological formations.
Overnight Parys. |
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The
Vredefort Dome,
approximately 120 km south-west of
Johannesburg, is a representative part of a
larger meteorite impact structure, or
astrobleme. Dating back 2,023 million years,
it is the oldest astrobleme yet found on
Earth. With a radius of 190 km, it is also
the largest and the most deeply eroded.
Vredefort Dome bears witness to the world’s
greatest known single energy release event,
which had devastating global effects
including, according to some scientists,
major evolutionary changes. It provides
critical evidence of the Earth’s geological
history and is crucial to understanding of
the evolution of the planet. Despite the
importance of impact sites to the planet’s
history, geological activity on the Earth’s
surface has led to the disappearance of
evidence from most of them, and Vredefort is
the only example to provide a full
geological profile of an astrobleme below
the crater floor. |
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| Day 13 |
Drive to the Sterkfontein Caves.
Enjoy the caves tour and visit the museum. Continue on
to the Hartebeespoort Dam area. Overnight. |
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The
Sterkfontein
Caves
and Taung Skull Fossil Site, part of the
extension to the site inscribed in 1999, is
the place where in 1924 the celebrated Taung
Skull – a specimen of the species
Australopithecus africanus – was found.
Makapan Valley, also in the site, features
in its many archaeological caves traces of
human occupation and evolution dating back
some 3.3 million years. The area contains
essential elements that define the origin
and evolution of humanity. Fossils found
there have enabled the identification of
several specimens of early hominids, more
particularly of Paranthropus, dating back
between 4.5 million and 2.5 million years,
as well as evidence of the domestication of
fire 1.8 million to 1 million years ago. |
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| Day 14 |
Drive to Mapungubwe. Arrive
mid-afternoon. Overnight Mapungubwe. |
| Day 15 |
Day to explore Mapungubwe |
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Mapungubwe
is set hard against the northern border of
South Africa, joining Zimbabwe and Botswana.
It is an open, expansive savannah landscape
at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe
rivers. Mapungubwe developed into the
largest kingdom in the sub-continent before
it was abandoned in the 14th century. What
survives are the almost untouched remains of
the palace sites and also the entire
settlement area dependent upon them, as well
as two earlier capital sites, the whole
presenting an unrivalled picture of the
development of social and political
structures over some 400 years. |
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| Day 16 |
Return to Johannesburg for flight
home |
