Gorillas, Serengeti, Bots & Cape

Set in the southwest of Uganda, Bwindi Forest is one of the prime locations in Africa for viewing mountain gorillas. The area contains a handful of good lodges and offers an excellent range of other forest and cultural activities, notably including interaction with the Batwa pygmies.

Set in the remote west of Uganda, Queen Elizabeth National Park is the largest savanna safari area in the country, a stop on the overland route from Bwindi Forest to Kibale Forest, with guest accommodation in a handful of decent lodges, offering a wide range of safari activities including motorboat safari and chimpanzee tracking.

Set in the southwest of Uganda, Kibale Forest is an important tropical reserve, the best location in the country for viewing chimpanzees, with guest accommodation in several lodges, of which one or two are of decent quality. The surrounding farmland is extremely scenic.

Serengeti Mara is the prime but potentially busy area for migration herds and river crossings during the Jul-Nov dry season and a wonderful quiet backwater at other times, with guest accommodation in around 30 small lodges and camps, offering a good range of safari experiences.

Serengeti Southcentral is one of the most magical of areas, with migration calving Dec-Mar, superb Maasai interaction, incredible palaeontology and just two rather cool mid-priced lodges.

Situated 10 km to the southeast of the Ngorongoro Crater, Karatu is an area of fabulous rural scenery centred on a busy agricultural town, with guest accommodation in some lovely farmhouse lodges, offering a wide range of cultural, active and safari experiences.

Set to the northeast of South Africa, Johannesburg is the great commercial heart of the country and the main transport hub, a sprawling mess of a place, scarred through its heart by the gold mines. It is not somewhere safari travellers tend to linger too long, although the Cradle of Mankind may be worth a visit.

Set in the north of Botswana, the Sekwana Concession is an up-and-coming sector of the Okavango Delta, with guest accommodation in a handful of diverse camps and offering a range of wet and dry safari activities. Relatively well-priced.

Set in the north of Botswana, the Ranns Concession is a scenic private sector of the Okavango Delta, with guest accommodation in a handful of diverse camps and offering a range of wet and dry safari activities, especially renowned for leopards.

Set in the Western Cape of South Africa, Cape Town is a fabulous, fascinating city, tucked in the folds of a very beautiful national park, where you are never short of a view and never more than a short walk away from an epic hiking trail. There's so much to see and do that a few nights will only enable you to scratch the surface.

Set on the Whale Coast, De Hoop is a lovely coastal nature reserve, a real hidden gem, containing fabulous white dunes, swimmable rock pools, shore-based whale-watching (Jun-Oct), fascinating endemic fynbos flora and fauna, plus a good range of larger mammals, notably including baboons, bonteboks and caracals. There are a handful of good accommodation options.

Set in the heart of the Cape Winelands, Franschhoek is a beautiful and relaxed village and a very popular place for our guests to stay, with a wealth of high class wineries, restaurants and hotels, plus options for shopping, mountain hiking and biking.