South Africa

Itinerary
A 14 day tour through the beautiful and enchanting capital of South Africa, Cape Town. It’s
a fully escorted tour that will make you get in touch with the wild nature, the history and the
stunning beauty of this spectacular country.

Accommodation will be in a 3-star-hotel with full range of facilities, only a few steps away
from the beach of Cambs Bay and within 5 minutes from the International Airport of Cape
Town. The hotel is on a half-board basis.

Departure:
-14th December from Malpensa Airport, Milan. The non-stop flight will take off at 5.00 am
and it will land at the International Airport in Cape Town at 18.05 am. A private coach will
take you to the hotel for the check in.

-19th December from the International Airport of Cape Town. The flight will take off at 10.35
pm and will land at 11.25 am at Malpensa Airport, Milan.

Price:: 2450,50 Euro each

The Tour price includes:

 Transportation by airplane
 Transportation by private coach, to and from the hotel
 Accommodation at the Westing Arabella Hotel in double rooms with private
bathroom
 Breakfast and dinner
Day One:
The group will meet at 9.00 am at the entrance of the hotel to depart for the South African
Museum (SAM), the oldest museum in sub-Saharan Africa, who has been adding to their
collections for nearly 200 years and was established in 1825. It offers a really vast range of
exhibitions: from ancient fossils to animals which were found as recently as a week ago,
there are Stone Age tools, over 120 000 years old, side by side with displays of traditional
clothes from last century. The South African Museum offers a diverse range of exhibitions
and visitors have not failed to leave the Museum without a better understanding of the
earth and its biological and cultural diversity - both past and present. Displayed are also
hand-made tools from the Pacific Islands, which were property of Capitan Cook, who left
them there before going back to his mother country, Great Britain.

The South African Museum was founded by Lord Charles Somerset and is the second
oldest scientific institute in the country - the Royal Observatory was established just five
years earlier. It is both a research and educational institution and offers collections of
natural history and anthropological objects that document all forms of life - living and
extinct - from southern Africa. 

The South African Museum also traces the material cultural heritage of our indigenous
populations back to their earliest origins, and the research collections are studied by
scientists and students world-wide. The South African Museum is one of the biggest
tourist attractions in Cape Town and over 400 000 people visit the museum each year.

In the afternoon the group will be headed to the V & A Waterfront in Cape Town, where
they’ll take a ferry and reach Robben Island. From the 17th to the 20th centuries, Robben
Island served as a place of banishment, isolation and imprisonment. In fact Nelson
Mandela was imprisoned there for 27 years, before becoming South Africa’s first democrat
President. Today it is a World Heritage Site and museum, a remainder to all africans of the
price paid for freedom.

People lived on Robben Island many thousands of years ago, when the sea channel
between the Island and the Cape mainland was not covered with water. Since the Dutch
settled at the Cape in the mid-1600s, Robben Island has been used primarily as a prison.

Indigenous African leaders, Muslim leaders from the East Indies, Dutch and British
soldiers and civilians, women, and anti-apartheid activists, including South Africa's first
democratic President, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and the founding leader of the Pan
Africanist Congress, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, were all imprisoned on the Island.  

Robben Island has not only been used as a prison. It was a training and defence station in
World War II (1939-1945) and a hospital for people with leprosy, and the mentally and
chronically ill (1846-1931). In the 1840s, Robben Island was chosen for a hospital because
it was regarded as both secure (isolating dangerous cases) and healthy (providing a good
environment for cure). During this time, political and common-law prisoners were still kept
on the Island. As there was no cure and little effective treatment available for leprosy,
mental illness and other chronic illnesses in the 1800s, Robben Island was a kind of prison
for the hospital patients too.

Since 1997 it has been a museum and a heritage site. The museum is a dynamic
institution, which acts as a focal point of South African heritage. It runs educational
programmes for schools, youths and adults, facilitates tourism development, conducts
ongoing research related to the Island and fulfils an archiving function. 

The tour will include:

 A visit to the infamous Maximum Security Prison

 Interaction with an ex-political prisoner

Day Two
The group will meet at 10 am and will take a coach to visit the Cango caves, a
spectacular underground wonder in the city of Oudtshoorn where an experienced
guide will show you the finest dripstone caverns, with their vast halls and towering
formations.

In the 19th century, entrance to the Caves cost 5 rix dollars – the modern equivalent

of about R500.00 – but that even didn’t deter them and many carted away parts of
the delicate stalactites and stalagmites for souvenirs or engraved their names onto
the walls. In response, the governor of the Cape Colony, Lord Charles Somerset,
published the first Caves Regulation in 1820. The 1st law designed to protect an
environmental resource in South Africa; it banned the collection of souvenirs,
proved for fines for anyone caught damaging Caves formations and prescribed an
entrance fee which had to be paid to the District Officer – who was made
responsible for enforcing the rules.
Many of the most significant discoveries in the Caves were made by its first full-time
guide, Johnnie van Wassenaar. – who served for 43 years: from 1891 until his
retirement in 1934. He opened many side chambers and introduced thousands of
people to Cango 1, which remains the only part of the Caves which the public may
visit. Importantly, though, it is clear that the Caves were known to man long before
Europeans first landed at the Cape: recent finds – of some tool left behind in ancient
hearths in the Cave mouth – prove that humans have lived and sheltered here for at
least 80 000 years.

The Cango Caves reveal their secrets painfully slowly. Where once we thought that
they’d been inhabited for a thousand centuries, recent archaeological finds have
now proved that they’ve sheltered us for more than 80 000 years.
Where once we thought that they were only about one kilometres in length, we now
know that they extend for well over5 kilometres – and that they could be even
bigger still.

But the Caves’ history and their size are just two of their many mysteries.
Is there another secret entrance to the Caves? Or were these unfortunates drowned
and left behind by receding floodwaters? And how did the skeletons of bats – which
 have also been found in Cango 2 – become enclosed in calcite many hundreds of
even thousands of years ago?
How did the artist prove himself with a light source to work?
Why have so many Caves guides committed suicide? And is there a ghost in the
Sand bypass (a tunnel which branches off from the Drum Chamber)?

The tour will last 2 hours, including the hour long ride to reach the destination.

After lunch you will be given a couple hours of free time so that you can visit the
city, full of little museums dedicated to the caves but also with lots of shops selling
souvenirs.

Day three:
This entire day will be dedicated to Kruger National Park, one of the largest game reserves
in Africa established to protect the wildlife.

Where nearly 2 million hectares of unrivalled diversity of life forms fuses with historical and
archaeological sights – this is real Africa.

The world-renowned Kruger National Park offers a wildlife experience that ranks with the
best in Africa. Established in 1898 to protect the wildlife of the South African Lowveld, this
national park of nearly 2 million hectares, SANParks - Kruger National Park is unrivalled in
the diversity of its life forms and a world leader in advanced environmental management
techniques and policies.
Truly the flagship of the South African national parks, Kruger is home to an impressive
number of species: 336 trees, 49 fish, 34 amphibians, 114 reptiles, 507 birds and 147
mammals. Man's interaction with the Lowveld environment over many centuries - from
bushman rock paintings to majestic archaeological sites like Masorini and Thulamela - is
very evident in the Kruger National Park.
These treasures represent the cultures, persons and events that played a role in the
history of the Kruger National Park and are conserved along with the park's natural assets.

Day four:
GOURMET DELIGHTS - Full Day Tour
Eat to your heart's content on local delicacies.
Tulbagh to the rescue of chocoholics
Chocoholics, look no further than Moniki Chocolatier at Schoonderzicht farm at Tulbagh.
Here you can indulge in exquisite, handcrafted Belgian chocolates, olive tastings and
wines.
Pick your own cherries, berries, grapes or roses
Pick your own fruit on farms throughout the Western Cape. Cherry season at Ceres is from
the last week in November to the end of December. Find strawberries at
Stellenbosch, Wellington and George from October to December,
or grapes at Worcesterand Calitzdorp from February to March. And then there are
berries: youngberries,gooseberries, blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, loganberries, 
raspberries – you find them all at Wellington and Swellendam. Berry season is from
November to December.

Day Five:
The entire day will be free: you will be able to visit the city, buy souvenirs in the hundreds
of shops all over the town, relax on the beach or do whatever you like to do to make this
wonderful journey a little more personal.

Retrival will be at 19.00 at the Hotel, where the coach will be waiting to take you to the
airport.