Today, you will fly from the UK to Johannesburg with connecting flight(s) along the way.

On your arrival in Johannesburg, you will be picked up from the airport and driven to the camp where you will be staying for the next four nights. The afternoon can be enjoyed at the camp, jumping in the pool and just relaxing after the flight.

You will be getting up early today because you’re going on safari in none other than Kruger National Park!  The wildlife in the park is amazing, and although we can’t tell you what you will see, we promise it will be an experience of a lifetime. The park has one of the largest animal populations in the world, with some 12,000 elephants, 27,000 buffaloes, around 90,000 impalas and about 1,500 lions thought to inhabit the 20,000 km².

You will spend the whole day in the park, interrupted only by a lunch break at a small cafeteria.

The animals are most active early on in the day before the sun has heated up the surroundings too much. Lions are trudging home after the night’s hunt, elephants are eating leaves and impalas are grazing in the damp morning dew.

In the middle of the day, the whole park becomes a little lethargic. The sun beats down, the animals relax and you have lunch. This time of day is also good for focusing on the landscape you find yourself in. Enjoy the different trees and the many birds, and practise looking for tracks in the sand next to the car.

In the afternoon, the animals wake up again. The elephants start making their way to the watering holes to drink and bathe, and the big cats stretch lazily in the shade and begin to consider whether it’s time to hunt again.

The park is closed to the public at night to give the animals a break from cars, lights and people. You leave the park at around sunset and drive back to the camp where a cold beer and a good dinner await you.

The days are yours to do with as you wish.

You may wish simply to relax by the pool or have a massage, but you can also choose to go on one of the extra excursions organised by TourCompass.

Below is a selection of supplementary tour options that you can book and pay for at the camp via our tour coordinator.

You will be picked up from your camp and driven to the airport, from which you fly to Cape Town. You will be met by our local partner and driven to your hotel, where you’ll be staying for the next four nights.

The rest of the day is yours to explore the charming South African city.

The days in Cape Town are yours to do as you please.

You can choose to explore the city on your own – there’s plenty to see and do, such as shopping and fine dining on the beautiful Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, located at Cape Town’s historic harbour, or visiting some of the city’s many exciting museums.

You can also opt to purchase various excursions if there is something specific you would like to do. We recommend booking the excursions from home as many of them are very popular, and it can be difficult to get a place at short notice (such as the excursion to Robben Island, hiking on Table Mountain and whale watching).

After breakfast, you will be picked up from your hotel. It’s time for the final part of the tour, namely a guided tour of the Garden Route. The official Garden Route is a 300-km-long coastal route between Mossel Bay (Western Cape) and Storms River (Eastern Cape).

The first stop on the Garden Route tour is Oudtshoorn. Although Oudtshoorn is not officially on the Garden Route, it’s a must-visit. Oudtshoorn is also known as the ostrich capital of the world, and you will head there along the famous Route 62, which is nicknamed “the world’s longest wine route”. The drive to Klein Karoo, where Oudtshoorn is located, is scenic and differs somewhat from the actual Garden Route. You drive through a plateau-like landscape, surrounded by mountains and vineyards. Along the way, you’ll stop at one of the small towns on the route where you will have the opportunity to buy lunch.

The tour continues through the scenic landscapes to Oudtshoorn, where you’re given a brief guided tour before checking in at the hotel, where dinner awaits.

After breakfast, it’s time to take a closer look at Oudtshoorn’s two big attractions, starting with Cango Caves. The 20 million-year-old dripstone caverns offer impressive stalagmites and stalactites which are beautifully illuminated. You will visit the caves on a guided tour.

You will then head to an ostrich farm, where you will learn more about how Oudtshoorn ended up being the world’s ostrich capital. You have the chance to buy some great souvenirs in the shop.

The tour then continues to the cosy town of Knysna. Before departure, you will stop at a restaurant to buy lunch.

The drive from Oudtshoorn to Knysna takes a couple of hours, and the scenery changes dramatically along the way. The first part takes you through Klein Karoo, which you now know, but after the Outeniqua pass, the coastal landscapes of the Garden Route appear.

The Garden Route is not, as you might think, named after the neatly landscaped scenery or raft of corn fields, rows of carrots and courgette plantations. The nickname “The Garden Route” is simply the result of a highly effective marketing campaign. With its great biodiversity, green woodlands, long white sandy beaches, protected lagoons with abundant wildlife, and cosy little towns with their own distinctive character, the nickname is, however, quite fitting. The contrasts are large, the distances relatively small, and the area is ideal for nature lovers.

Having arrived in Knysna, you check in to your hotel where you will be spending two nights. The rest of the day is yours to do as you please. The guide can advise you on restaurants – there are a lot to choose from in Knysna, especially if you’re into seafood!

The morning is spent sailing on the lagoon at Knysna to Featherbed Nature Reserve. The nature reserve offers some amazing vantage points and unique flora and fauna. A walk of around 2 km takes you through wild forest and past “fynbos”, the very characteristic local vegetation.

After breakfast, a visit to Monkeyland Primate Sanctuary awaits you, where you can meet some 550 monkeys, all rescued from captivity and now living “in the wild” at one of the world’s largest monkey sanctuaries. You will walk through the rainforest with a guide who tells you about all the monkeys you’ll find here. One of the absolute highlights is crossing the 128-metre-long hanging bridge, where you walk between the treetops, taking you right up close to the monkeys in their most natural environment.

In the late afternoon, you return to Knysna. En route, you’ll make a stop at another of the highlights of the Garden Route, Bloukrans Bridge, one of the world’s highest bungee jumping bridges. The mere sight of those brave bungee jumpers is enough to take most people’s breath away!

You’ll spend another night in Knysna. The evening is yours, so you can go out to eat.

The morning is spent sailing on the lagoon at Knysna to Featherbed Nature Reserve. The nature reserve offers some amazing vantage points and unique flora and fauna. A walk of around 2 km takes you through wild forest and past “fynbos”, the very characteristic local vegetation.

You will enjoy a delicious lunch before heading to Mossel Bay, where you will visit the Bartolomeu Dias Museum Complex, which is both a natural and cultural history museum. At the museum, you will see a replica of the ship Dias sailed on when he and his crew landed in Mossel Bay in 1488.

At the end of the day, you will arrive in the cosy little town of Hermanus, known as the whale capital of South Africa. You will spend two nights here.

Today is yours to do as you please. You can choose to purchase one or more excursions (to be booked from home when you book the tour) or you can enjoy the small town.

If you’re in Hermanus during whale season (around June–December), you won’t even have to sail out to see the whales. From the coast, you may be lucky enough to see the playful little whales and the relaxed adult whales enjoying the bountiful supply of food. They like jumping and splashing about, and you’d have to be really unlucky not to see a couple of whales swimming right in to the coast. Sometimes they even venture all the way into the harbour at Hermanus. From your hotel, you can walk the 5-km-long walk along the coast via the Cliff Path into Hermanus. There are plenty of “whale spots” along the way with benches where you can sit and enjoy the view – even outside whale season.

After breakfast, the tour heads back to Cape Town, where it’s time to say goodbye to South Africa. You can also choose to combine the tour with one of our extensions.

You land in the UK after a lovely, adventure-packed holiday.