South Africa

The ‘rainbow country’ is difficult to describe in a nutshell. The South Africa of cultural diversity, of national parks rich in wildlife, of coastlines inhabited by penguins and breathtaking coastal views of the African south, of green hills or desert and semi-desert expanses, of modern cities and traditional villages, all seasoned with an endemic flora of extraordinary variety. A geographical and cultural mosaic that gathers around the memory of one man, Nelson Mandela.

Cape Town, a cosmopolitan and modern city to be discovered while enjoying biltong (dried meat), sipping a glass of wine from the renowned vineyards of the Winelands and listening to the notes of the Zulu queen Miriam Makeba. It lies on the spectacular landscapes of the Cape of Good Hope, between mountains and sea, with its naturalistic symbol Table Mountain and its political symbol, Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned during the years of battle against Apartheid. But also its marvellous coastline with its characteristic rainbow-coloured beach cages, which echo the shocking colours of the houses in Bo-Kaao, not forgetting the penguin colonies in Boulders and a close encounter with white sharks.

Kruger National Park and Addo Elephant National Park, among the most famous parks in the world, where you can spot a multitude of the ‘Big Five’, in adrenaline-fuelled face-to-face encounters with elephants, buffalo, lions, leopards, rhinos, giraffes, impalas and zebras. The spectacular nature of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park with its extraordinary biodiversity, home to five different ecosystems, or the breathtaking landscapes of the Blyde River Canyon, opening onto vertiginous gorges of explosive nature and rivers nestled between crevasses.

The country is the cradle of humanity, of hominid fossils preserved in the bowels of the earth in the Cradle of Humankind, but also of the contradictions of this same humanity, of which Johannesburg and the immense township of Soweto, with its Orlando Towers and Mandela’s house, are the symbols. The home of the Bushmen of the red Kalahari and of Bantu peoples, the Xhosa on the Wild Coast and the Zulu of Zulululand, between Durban and the misty peaks of the Drankesberg, but also the country that adopted the policy of Apartheid, of Boer-Afrikaner segregationism.

A land of contrasts, to be discovered and rediscovered.