Get out of Europe for this year’s holiday and explore the wine and wildlife of South Africa

People often think of an African holiday as a ‘once in a lifetime experience’ and don’t realise that it can actually be just as good value, and significantly more exotic, than heading for Europe.  Particularly this year, when British holiday makers are not getting much for their money when it comes to spending in the Eurozone, this is the time to have a look at what else is on offer for your holiday rentals and hotel accommodation.

South Africa, although a long-ish flight (10 hours), is very easy to get to.  There are lots of direct flights from the UK, and depending on what time of year you go, you can fly for as little as £300 per person.  There is also no jetlag to contend with, so you won’t find yourself spending half your holiday getting over the time change.  Accommodation choices abound here – from hotels and B&B’s to self catering holiday rentals in the form of houses on wine estates, beach huts, city apartments, game lodges and all points in between.

South Africa is a big country, so depending on how much time you’ve got, you’ll need to decide what you’re after.  To experience some of everything, you’ll need to be there for quite some time, although internal travel is easy, and car hire and internal budget flights are an option.  If you’ve got a couple of weeks, you could spend a week in one of the holiday rentals on offer in the western Cape, then head to the east of the country for a week of game viewing.  Our winter is South Africa’s summer, although the north and eastern provinces can have good weather the whole year round.

South Africa is one of just 17 countries to the world which are considered to be ‘megadiverse’.  It contains more than 10% of all the earth’s known plant species, and has endless national parks, lots of which are home to the ‘Big 5′, the five mammals which people flock to South Africa to see.  There are holiday rentals all around the edges of the national parks, giving you easy access to the dawn and dusk wildlife viewing, and offering you an experience of bush living.

Colonial Cape Town is the antithesis of bush lifestyle – it’s a world famous city and teems with things to do and see, from fabulous restaurants to fascinating museums, exquisite views and easy day trips to the likes of Table Mountain, Robben island and the Cape of Good Hope.    Hotels and holiday rentals in Cape Town offer you the chance to live right in the midst of this fascinating city.  Not far from Cape Town are the Cape Winelands, where if you stay for a few days in somewhere like Stellenbosch, you can taste wine to your heart’s content while enjoying views across the stunning landscapes.

With something for everyone, from adrenalin activities, to beautiful beaches, city living and bush walking, it’s well worth the trip, especially if you want to try somewhere other than Europe this year.

About the Author

Olly Symonds is the joint founder of One Off Places, a holiday property rentals website specifically geared towards individual and one-off style properties. Launched in 2007 it offers users the chance to search for exactly what they want on their holiday, whether it’s a secluded farmhouse, a penthouse apartment or a luxury villa. See www.oneoffplaces.co.uk for details.

Wild Life in South Africa

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Wildlife of South Africa: A Photographic Guide $18.48 A handy, all-in-one photographic field guide to the wildlife of South Africa, this guide covers the region’s mammals, birds, reptiles, frogs and trees most likely to be seen, with concise accounts and distribution maps for each species. A brief introduction discusses geology, climate, vegetation zones, wildlife hotspots, and tips on watching wildlife.

South Africa $31.48 Pack your bags We’re headed to South Africa. On this whirlwind tour, you’ll learn all about the country’s landscape, culture, people, and more. We’ll explore the city life of Johannesburg and the wildlife of Kruger National Park and find out what South Africans celebrate on April 27. A special section introduces South Africa’s three capitals, many languages, population, and flag. Hop on board and take a fun-filled look at your world.

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South Africa: A Visual Tour Through Its Regions $23.98 South Africa – A Visual Tour Through Its Regions is an all-new visual celebration of the scenic splendour, cultural diversity, wildlife and architecture of South Africa’s most extraordinary and magnificent regions.

Wild Edens: Africa’s Premier Game Parks and Their Wildlife $3.48 In Wild Edens: Africa’s Premier Game Parks and Their Wildlife, longtime conservationist and seasoned African traveler Joseph James Shomon journeys through the wild African scene, revealing its magnificence and mystique, and wonderfully describes the game parks’ location, ecology, and irreplaceable wildlife. From the summit of Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, the author surveys the marvelous Edens of East Africa, among the last Pleistocene-like concentrations of animals left in the world today. Descending, Shomon gives a firsthand account of the great sanctuaries, providing a knowledgeable escort on safari in the scrublands of Tsavo, where elephants are imperiled. He continues on to the Ark at Aberdares, where visitors can watch, under floodlights of a watchtower, rain forest animals come to feed; to the rain forests of Mount Kenya; and to the Serengeti and Mara Plains, with their great migrating herds besieged by predators and thwarted in their journeys by swollen rivers and flooded lakes. The journey continues through the Great Rift Valley and Olduvai Gorge to Lake Manyara with its tree-climbing lions: Ngorongoro Crater: Samburu and Meru, where the rhino is threatened: the waterways of Uganda: the Mountains of the Moon: the Kalahari Desert; and the wildlife sanctuaries of South Africa, ending the tour at the Cape of Good Hope. Shomon argues that the growth of impersonal technology and excessive mechanization, as well as the world’s focus on violence, social ills, and discord on our domestic front, consume the world’s energies, leaving little interest for safeguarding and conserving Africa’s wild edens. Shomon’s engaging and informative text, complemented with attractivephotographs and pen-and-ink drawings, encourages those interested in Africa and its wildlife to visit the cradle of our ancestral beginnings, if only from their armchairs, and to take an active role in its preservation and conservation.

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The Rough Guide to South Africa (Paperback) $26.99 The Rough Guide to South Africa is the most comprehensive and informative guide available to this spectacular country. You’ll find detailed information on everything from hiking in the mysterious Drakensberg to sampling wine in the many Western Cape’s estates. Updated specifically for travellers visiting South Africa for the football World Cup in 2010, Lesotho and Swaziland have been excluded from the book allowing for more in-depth information on how to tackle the World Cup in this edition. Whether you want to wander the pastel-coloured streets of the Bo-Kaap, explore the Garden Route’s dramatic Storms River Mouth, or get spine-tinglingly close to lions and other big game in Kruger National Park, this guide will lead you to the best attractions in South Africa. The Rough Guide to South Africa features up-to-date reviews of all the hottest new places to stay from hotels in South Africa to community minded accommodations and tour companies. You can find the best restaurants, shops, bars and clubs in South Africa across every price range giving you balanced reviews and honest, first-hand opinions. You can explore all corners of South Africa with authoritative background on everything from local cuisine to desert wildlife, relying on comprehensive maps and practical language tips.

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Tourism in the New South Africa $107 A new model of tourism development has recently emerged out of a widening concern for the environment. Known variously as 'ecotourism', 'new tourism', 'socially responsible tourism', huge claims are made for it in terms of what it might offer in promoting national tourism development. Yet how well does this new model work in practice? And what does it mean to be an international tourist encountering the cultural, political and economic particularities of the South African experience? Garth Allen and Frank Brennan seek to explore the realities of this new morality of tourism as experienced in four important tourist areas of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa: the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park – South Africa's third largest reserve and a vast and beautiful area accredited World Heritage Status; the Phinda Resource Reserve, renowned for its diverse habitats and rich wildlife; Kosi Bay, a wetland area of international importance; and the Durban beachfront. For the first time, they try to locate the international tourist within the moral maze of tourism in the new South Africa.Their analysis can be applied to other societies committed to the belief that investing in tourism development will be a fast track to economic development and will resonate with the moral challenges facing the international tourist.