15-Day Tour of South Africa
 

November 21 – December 5, 2020
All Accommodations:

  • 4/5 Star Hotel TBD – included
  • All Breakfasts – included
  • Lunch & Dinners (Own Expense)
  • 1 Dinner included

 

Transportation Details:

  • Round Trip Airfare from JFK New York to Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa
  • All in-country ground transportation (except during free time)

Click here to download a PDF copy of the trip itinerary.

6 Days in Johannesburg

  • SOWETO Township
  • Nelson Mandela Museum**: Mandela House is the house in Orlando West, Soweto, South Africa, that former South African president Nelson Mandela lived in from 1946 to 1962. It is located at number 8115, at the corner of Vilakazi and Ngakane streets, a short distance up the road from the home of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. Mandela donated the house to the Soweto Heritage Trust (of which he is the founder) on 1 September 1997, to run as a museum. It was declared a National Heritage Site in 1999. **(Optional – Own Expense)
  • Rosebank Craft Market
  • Hector Pieterson Museum: Hector Pieterson (1964 – 16 June 1976) became the subject of an iconic image of the 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa when a news photograph by Sam Nzima of the dying Hector being carried by another student while his sister ran next to them, was published around the world. He was killed at the age of 12 when the police opened fire on protesting students. For years, 16 June stood as a symbol of resistance to the brutality of the apartheid government. Today, it is known as National Youth Day — when South Africans honor young people and bring attention to their needs
  • The Apartheid Museum: The Apartheid Museum, illustrates the rise and fall of apartheid. The museum is a superb example of design, space and landscape offering the international community a uniquely South African experience. A series of 22 individual exhibition areas takes the visitor through a dramatic emotional journey that tells the story of a state-sanctioned system based on racial discrimination and the struggle of the majority to overthrow this tyranny. For anyone wanting to understand and experience what apartheid in South Africa was really like, a visit to the Apartheid Museum is essential.
  • Constitution Hill: Nowhere is the story of South Africa’s turbulent past and it’s extraordinary transition to democracy be told as it is at Constitutional Hill. This national heritage site has witnessed a century of South Africa’s history. From rebellious British Soldiers who fought the Boers at the turn of the century, to the youths caught up in the Soweto uprising, to the dawn of democracy and the building of South Africa’s new Constitution. Constitutional Hill depicts the injustices of South Africa’s past while observing the process by which freedom was won and is now protected.

1 Day Safari in Kruger National Park

Safari: 

  • 4 to 5 hour Drive to Kruger
  • Safari Game Drive
  • Overnight stay in Kruger
  • Early Morning Game Drive
  • Depart for Panoramic Drive to Johannesburg

  • Lilliesleaf Farm: Lilliesleaf Farm was once the nerve centre of the liberation movement and a place of refuge for its leaders. Lilliesleaf Farm was the farm used secretly by African National Congress activists in the 1960s and was the location where many prominent African National Congress leaders were arrested, leading to the Rivonia Trial. Today, Lilliesleaf is one of South Africa’s foremost, award-winning heritage sites, where the journey to democracy in South Africa is honored. Take time to tour Lilliesleaf Farm where people from diverse backgrounds, but with a common vision, met to discuss South Africa’s emancipation from an oppressive apartheid regime. Today the farm is a repository for those conversations, and a place where the fruits of a tree and equal South Africans are recounted and celebrated.

6 Days in Cape Town

Cape Town Tours:

  • Robben Island: For nearly 400 years, Robben Island, 12 kilometers from Cape Town, was a place of banishment, exile, isolation and imprisonment. It was here that rulers sent those they regarded as political troublemakers, social outcasts and the unwanted of society. During the apartheid years, Robben Island became internationally known for its institutional brutality.
  • Township Tour: On the Walking Tour of Langa, you’ll see four different housing and socio-economic areas, including worker hostels and informal settlements, along the way residents may greet you in their language, Xhosa. You will also experience: The infamous “singles quarters” and the hostels, –which is a product of the Migrant Workers Laws of the previous regime which destroyed families and created a dysfunctional society, “Spaza” shops and “Shebeens”, the “new flats” which are the old hostels now converted into smart new family apartments offering a chance for decent family living, a Street Craft Market, the Informal Settlement and at the end of the Tour, visit the Gugustheba Art Centre.
  • District Six Museum: Originally established as a mixed community of freed slaves, merchants, artisans, laborers and immigrants, District Six was a vibrant center with close links to the city and the port. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the history of removals and marginalization had begun. The first to be ‘resettled’ were black South Africans, forcibly displaced from the District in 1901. Today although large parts of District Six has been resettled, there are still many desolate wide-open spaces of land. The District Six Foundation was founded in 1989 and the museum in 1994, as a memorial to the forced movement of 60,000 inhabitants of various races in District Six during Apartheid in South Africa at the seventies of the 20th Century. The floor of the museum is covered with a big map of the district with hand written notes of former inhabitants, which indicate where their houses were located then. Other pieces in the museum are old traffic signs, presentations of moments of history, lives of families, historical declarations and the demolition.
  • Wine Tasting Tour: Breathtaking natural scenery, longstanding cultural heritage and world-class wine-producing estates characterise the Cape Winelands region, a tourist Mecca that always ranks highly on visitors’ itineraries, summer and winter alike. There are many wine farms along the route, some large and others boutique. Visitors are always welcome and tours, sales outlets and eateries are dotted throughout the region and the outstanding wines produced in this area are world-renowned.
  • Seal Island**: – Seal Island is named by the after the large number of Cape Fur Seals that occupy it. It is also home to sea birds and it is likely that non-marine species fly there to breed as well. The island is an outcrop of the Cape granite and rises no more than about 4 – 6 meters above the high tide mark. The island is long and narrow- 800 meters by 50 meters. There is no vegetation or soil of any significance and no beach. Enjoy a 40-minute scenic excursion to Duiker Island, which is home to a squad of blubbery, whiskered Cape Fur Seals. Snap away at the doe-eyed pups and their slick and slippery parents barking out warnings. The glass-bottomed boats offer a convenient porthole through which to spy the seals zipping past underwater. **(Optional – Own Expense)
  • Boulder Beach: Boulder’s Beach with its wind sheltered bays and safe sandy shores, is home to a breeding colony of over 2000 endangered African Penguins. On the pristine sand explore the large 540 million year-old granite boulders, small rock pools and little bays in the close proximity of the flightless little swimming birds. To view the African Penguins and their nesting and breeding sites, a superb walkway has been established that takes the visitor on an intimate tour of the area that these endangered birds call home.  African Penguins were previously referred to as the “Jackass” Penguin due to their donkey-like call, but a more diplomatic choice of name saw them re-christened as African Penguins.
  • Table Mountain: Table Mountain is a sandstone plateau rising up above the Cape Flats. The top is approximately 3km wide, and at its highest point, Maclears Beacon, rises to 1,085m. Over the centuries it has become one of South Africa’s most famous landmarks. The steep cliffs and rocky outcrops of the mountain play home to a number of plants and animals. The mountain is home to approximately 1 470 species of plants: more than the entire British Isles! Complimenting this vast array of flora is a stunning range of fauna, some, like the Table Mountain Ghost Frog, being found in no other place in the world.
  • Green Market Square
  • Visit to Local School (?)

 

Estimated Per Person Cost: $3,940/person (Double Occupancy), $5,200 (Single Occupancy)

The Key to a Great Trip is “Being Flexible”