Any bar that has a giant, shiny disco ball as part of its décor means partying business. And disco balls are just the beginning. Cape Town’s recently renovated Grand Africa also boasts an enormous red lounge in the shape of some very luscious-looking lips, two huge lion statues and a floating love heart. Despite the audacious styling choices, the interiors are inviting and relaxing, complementing the wooden boardwalks that sit atop marshmallow soft sand and fairytale style day beds.
The incredible Table Mountain makes up Grand Africa’s backdrop while the Atlantic Ocean glistens out ahead. A wide-ranging menu (we recommend any of the seafood dishes) keeps the energy levels up for the DJ sets, which hit the decks from about 4pm during summer, while the cocktail menu keeps the party going. And as things heat up and the nights cool down, this playful, and a little bit cheeky, Cape Town beach club is the place to be.
Discover a side of Africa you may not be familiar with – one that’s devoid of lions and elephants – on an eye-opening tour through West Africa with Abercrombie & Kent. The 16-day West Africa: People Past & Present expedition explores the colourful nations of Ghana, Togo and Benin, which are renowned for sun-soaked beaches, lively colonial cities (there’s a strong European influence due to the gold and slave trades) and fascinating cultural rituals.
Highlights include attending a real-life voodoo ceremony and meeting a witch doctor in Togo, cruising Africa’s largest stilt fishing village in Benin, checking out Ghana’s Akwasidae Festival and meeting local artisans. It’s a charming insight into a version of Africa that doesn’t often make the brochure.
Madagascar is one of the most biodiverse landscapes in the world, so there’s no better way of immersing yourself in the natural splendour of this island than by trekking through it for two weeks. Exodus Travels will lead you on an epic expedition through Andringitra, Isalo and Ranomafana National Parks (home to a remarkable array of endemic birds, frogs, reptiles and mammals), and you’ll also climb the country’s second-highest peak, Peak Boby.
The trips includes five days of hiking with full porterage anda couple more days of shorter walks, but a stopover at the gorgeous coastal town of Ifaty allows you to rest your weary feet. Of course, there’s also a visit to Anja Reserve to see ring-tailed lemurs, because there’s no way you can leave Madagascar without checking out these cute critters.
Prepare to eat your way through Morocco on what has to be one of the country’s most delicious tours. Your gastronomic journey, called Savory Spices and Souks, begins in Casablanca, before moving on to the fishing village of Essaouira, the High Atlas Mountains and Marrakech. Borrowing from Arabic, Berber, French and Spanish cultures, the local cuisine is a mouthwatering medley of pastries, grilled meats, soups and aromatic spices. And guess what? You’ll be sampling it all.
Other highlights include cooking classes, where you’ll whip up traditional meals like a fish tagine, plus stopovers at a women’s argan oil co-op, Bahia Palace and the Hassan II Mosque. There’s even a street food tour, because there’s no such thing as eating too much on this culinary adventure.
Located near the centre of Serengeti National Park, this camp is the place to be if you don’t want to work too hard when it comes to viewing wildlife. Its 15 luxury tents, complete with plunge pools on decks, are set at the heart of an area renowned for the annual wildebeest migration.
Even if you visit outside those months, you’ll be captivated by what you see on both guided safaris and walks. All year, the landscape surrounding Nanyukie has a high concentration of lions, leopards and cheetahs. You’ll never feel crowded here either – even the main tent, where guests gather for sundowners and meals, has lots of sitting areas both inside and out.
From the broken bridge to the pink clinic is 2.89 kilometres, reads the directions. Keep driving past a Mopane tree forest and dried up rainwater pans. Watch out for elephants crossing the sand road. Getting to the Okavango Delta Music Festival feels more like a scavenger hunt than a straightforward foray, which is wholly appropriate given this is no mediocre event.
Botswana is famed as a wildlife destination, but we’re here to explore sounds and song rather than set out on safari. Packed tightly into a 4WD, crowded by a cluster of camping equipment, I’m taking two friends – sound engineer Carmen and music-loving Lauren – on an alternative Okavango adventure.
Our destination is as unusual as the directions. A small village roughly 45 minutes from the town of Maun, Tsutsubega has a San name meaning Place of the Emerald Spotted Dove. This gentle little bird frequents many a tree branch in these parts and is known in twitching circles as King of the Blues thanks to its mournful call. My grandmother, an avid birder, taught me how to remember its unmistakable song using this solemn rhyme: “My father’s dead, my mother’s dead, oh oh oh…” Although Tsutsubega village is named for the sombre ballad, it certainly contradicts its namesake on this particular weekend. Or maybe the doves sing a different rhyme – “Dancing ahead, dancing ahead, oh oh oh” – when, once a year, revellers are welcomed to this precious corner of the Okavango Delta.
Just beyond Tsutsubega village lies the forested oasis of Festival Island. It’s the end of August, when the Okavango Delta is flooded, so the island usually sits encircled by lily-laden waters. Drought, however, is visiting Botswana. Water levels at the UNESCO World Heritage Site are dependent on the annual rainfall received at the source, thousands of kilometres away in the central highlands of Angola.
Just like the would-be water, we’ve travelled a fair distance to be here – roughly 1,300 kilometres from our home city of Johannesburg in neighbouring South Africa. After checking in at the ticket office, which has been decked out with colourful skulls and handmade fabric bunting and is home to several sleeping pups, we cross one last stretch of sand to set up camp at the edge of Festival Island. It overlooks a dusty, rather than damp floodplain, but the dry conditions haven’t put anybody off.
Established in 2018, the Okavango Delta Music Festival is a three-day affair of live music and vibey DJ sets operating as sustainably as possible in this delicate wilderness area. In its first year, the festival entertained 500 guests, but in 2019 the ticket sales nearly doubled, hitting 900. With tents erected, we set our sights on the festival grounds to meet Jay Roode, one of the devoted organisers. “Last year was all about mokoro,” he says. “We had members of the community pole people across the floodplain to the island in a traditional dugout canoe, but this time we offer a different kind of local transport.” In this part of the country donkey carts provide daily mobility for many locals. Now freshly painted and embellished with flowers, the stylish carriages make for a memorable entrance. It’s just one of the ways this event was arranged to benefit its hosts.
After cooing over the doleful donkeys, I follow Jay to the dance floor. It’s a modest square covered with natural fibre rugs laid down in a bid to quell any dust being kicked up during dancing. The open-air stage is impressive and sits beneath towering leadwood, jackalberry and sausage trees. Bringing the speakers and sound equipment through all that sand from Maun was a logistical nightmare, Jay tells me, but it’s quickly forgotten as golden-hour light ushers in the first act.
The music selection for the festival is purposefully diverse. “We prefer our stars in the sky,” Jay says, smiling. This is not to say the artist line-up isn’t excellent. Quite the contrary; the performers are just not the regular headline acts. “We wanted to provide a platform to different artists, and stand by a strong African focus.” I recognise only one name from the line-up, South African Afro-folk favourite Bongeziwe Mabandla, but he’s not due to have his time in the spotlight until tomorrow. For now, I throw my arms up and find my feet a-flutter joining the audience in jamming to the playful beats and sanguine sounds of Zimbabwean musician So Kindly. (I also make a mental note to add their spice to my Spotify playlist once back home.)
Botswana is one of the least crowded countries in the world, with just 3.5 people per square kilometre, and it’s echoed here. There’s plenty of room on Festival Island. I look across the crowd. No matter race or age, everyone has breathing space. So much so that when the artists leave the stage, they join the party. Tomeletso Sereetsi, who hails from Botswana and performs as Sereetsi & the Natives, is one such merry-maker. “It’s awesome how the festival unites people from all over Southern Africa and beyond, both black and white,” he says. “That’s the often understated power of music and festivals.”
He’s right. There’s an intimacy to this event, and it’s further proved when I cross paths with another popular Botswana act on the dancefloor. Mpho Sebina describes her genre as ethereal soul, citing Sade, Bob Marley and Brenda Fassie as primary influences. She asks me to come watch her sing the next morning – “It’s an early slot, so I’m gathering a company” – although she really needn’t have worried. “I’ve already told my friends about this festival,” she continues.
“There are so many music acts from different parts of the continent, yoga, delicious drinks, and there is a spirit of oneness at the festival. Plus, the most scenic surroundings.”
Bands of children skip between us as we dance, invariably marching to their own drumbeat. Their beaming faces are coated with big-cat markings, painted by members of Cheetah Conservation Botswana. I laugh out loud when Mpho tells me her weirdest festival moment so far: “This guy was carrying his daughter – she must have been just five months – and she was stark naked, and it was beautiful how free she was. Then she pooped on her dad.” According to Freedom House, an NGO that researches and advocates political freedoms, there are just eight African countries that can be described as free. Botswana is one of them, and it feels especially present at the festival.
Sophie Dandridge and her husband Adrian are the festival directors, but their involvement is deeply rooted. They live nearby, within the Tsutsubega area. “Adrian and I have been involved with this community since he first moved here about 10 years ago,” Sophie tells me. The village is home to roughly 500 people, and almost half of the local community is trained then employed by the annual festival.
Even though it’s only for a weekend, through their ‘party-cipation’ all festival attendees help provide employment and encouragement to this remote outpost. After the first event in 2018, proceeds funded a reliable borehole and solar pump for Tsutsubega, providing drinking water for people and their livestock. With a large section of the delta enduring drought and floodwaters sitting scarily short of the normal range, it’s a crucial contribution.
It’s just the first day, but many of the new friends I make agree the Okavango Delta Music Festival is the antithesis of most commercial festivals. Sure, this event is about music (my feet sure feel the beat), but it’s also so much more. The festival and its intrepid organisers provide a much-needed alternative to Botswana’s mainstream safari sightseeing and bring tourism to marginal areas. I can’t help but think about the driving directions again, only this time they ring a lot more like life advice. When faced with a fork in the road, keep left.
Slightly north of the town of Dahab, you’ll come across this popular dive site in the Red Sea. Even if there wasn’t a cluster of buildings on the stretch of beach that meets the desert announcing you’d arrived, you’d still notice it on approach. Just metres off the shore and surrounded by a shallow reef, this is one patch of seriously royal blue.
The reason for the eye-catching change of colour is an underwater sinkhole more than a hundred metres deep. There’s an abundance of coral and marine life on the walls of the hole, making it a very inviting spot for divers and snorkellers. But don’t be fooled by the calm conditions if you’ve strapped a tank to your back. Plenty of divers have come unstuck here, trying to go far deeper than they should to find the underwater arch that leads to the open ocean.
Imagine wandering down to reception after a good night’s sleep in the African wilderness and crossing paths with an elephant on its way to pinch a couple of sweet mangoes from the surrounding trees. Well, if you join the Bushcamp’s South Luangwa Safari, run by Bench Africa, this could be your reality. As part of the six-day expedition through Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park you’ll move between two bush camps and the main Mfuwe Lodge, exploring the area with experienced local guides.
Tour numbers are kept small to allow for flexibility within the itinerary, and there are opportunities to stretch your legs on a walking safari, as well as head out on game drives in your search for wildlife. Our tip: for the best chance of an elephant encounter visit Mfuwe Lodge between late October and mid-December.
It doesn’t rate highly on any tourist hot lists, but fascinating Sudan is a forgotten paradise, home to ancient pyramids, royal temples and mysterious archaeological wonders. It’s also a place of great natural beauty, where sand dunes, palm trees and the colossal Nile River dominate the dramatic arid landscape. On this eye-opening 12-day voyage with MT Sobek, you’ll experience the history, culture and dazzling scenery firsthand, discovering a side to Sudan that often goes unreported.
Enthusiastic locals will welcome you to desert camps, knowledgeable guides will lead you through tombs and souks, and you’ll marvel at traditional whirling dervishes. There’s even a Nile River cruise that leads to the Nuri pyramids. This tour will redefine everything you believed about travelling to this rarely visited part of the world.
Five days, a relatively good level of fitness and a decent high altitude tolerance is all you’ll need to summit Morocco’s Mount Toubkal. Intimidated? Don’t be. The team at Flash Pack knows exactly how to guide you to the roof of North Africa. The trip begins in Marrakech, where you should make the most of your time to relax and refuel before heading into the foothills of the Atlas Mountains to tackle the apex. The daily 10-hour treks sound scary, but you’ll be rewarded with epic views of the Sahara, Atlantic Coast, Nfiss Valley and Siroua volcano.
The scenery will make every blister worth it, plus, you’ll be treated to a full-body exfoliation and steam bath when you’re done. Now there’s an incentive to reach the top!
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