Two years we said South Africa. Two years of "yes, let's do that" followed by quietly booking Portugal again. What actually got us there was stopping the planning and handing it off entirely to Praxis Holidays, who put together the whole thing through their Ultimate South Africa tour. Seven days. Two of us. A country that is about four completely different countries stacked inside one border.

Day 1: Johannesburg

Everybody said skip Joburg. Transfer, sleep, fly out. We didn't listen and I'm glad we didn't. Maboneng in the east of the city is nothing like what you picture when someone says Johannesburg. Street art on entire building sides. Coffee shops that are serious without being annoying about it. Little galleries showing work I'd never encountered and immediately wanted to follow. Dinner on a rooftop with the city behind us and my partner kept saying I didn't expect this. Neither did I, honestly.

Day 2: Sun City

Two hours out of the city and you've landed somewhere else entirely. The Palace of the Lost City is maximalist in a way that should be exhausting but somehow isn't. We spent the afternoon at the Valley of Waves like two adults with no children and no apologies, going down waterslides and having a completely brilliant time. That evening we sat at the casino watching other people lose money while we drank wine and felt quietly smug. Good day.

Day 3: Sabi Sands

4:45am alarm. I considered staying in bed. About twenty minutes into the morning drive I forgot I'd ever been tired. Lions on a kill, elephants close enough that you could hear the sound of them, and then a leopard in a tree that our guide spotted from what seemed like an impossible distance. My partner grabbed my arm when it appeared. Didn't let go for ten minutes. The afternoon was slower, all golden light and a family of rhino coming down to water as the sun dropped. We drove back to camp not really talking. Not because anything was wrong. Just because some things you need to sit inside quietly for a bit before you start turning them into sentences.

Day 4: Cape Town

Short flight from the bush airstrip to Cape Town International. Got to the hotel, walked into the room, and stopped. Table Mountain sitting right there in the window like it had always been waiting. Cape Town works on you immediately. You expect to like it and then you like it more than you had capacity for. V&A Waterfront that evening, a seafood place two people had specifically told us about, bed earlier than planned because we were still half-dissolved somewhere between time zones.

Day 5: Cape Town Properly

Cable car up Table Mountain before 9am, which is the only window before the cloud comes in, and it comes every single afternoon, no exceptions. The car rotates on the way up, so you get the city from every angle as you climb, and it's the kind of view that explains everything about why people move there and never leave. We walked the top for an hour, watched the cloud starting to build out over the ocean, came back down just ahead of it. Camps Bay in the afternoon, beach with the Twelve Apostles behind you and the Atlantic in front and my partner took about forty photos in twenty minutes and every single one was good. The location was doing all the work. Sunset from a bar on the beach, the ocean turning every colour it had, one of those evenings you go back to later when someone asks what was the best moment and you realise you can't answer properly so you just say this one.

Day 6: Garden Route to Knysna

Four hours from Cape Town to Knysna if you don't stop. We stopped six times. The beach at Wilderness, a river pass I didn't have a name for but pulled over anyway, mountains along the right side of the road the whole drive down. Knysna is inside a lagoon that the Indian Ocean pushes into through a gap between two sandstone cliffs that look staged. We went out through the gap by boat and the ocean on the other side of it is a completely different thing, bigger and less interested in you. Oysters for dinner on the waterfront. Very good case made.

Day 7: Oudtshoorn and the Cango Caves

Oudtshoorn is the ostrich capital of the world, which is a fact I hadn't thought about before and now think about more than expected. The farm visit was more interesting than it sounds, which I'll admit is a low bar but still. The Cango Caves are the real thing here though. Limestone caverns going back further than seems reasonable, chambers that keep opening into bigger chambers, formations that look deliberately artistic and obviously aren't. We drove back to Cape Town for the evening flight. Quiet for the first hour. Not sad exactly. More like neither of us was fully ready to stop being inside that week yet.

Seven days is not enough. It's also somehow exactly enough to have you talking about going back before you've even landed home.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="544"]                                                               SOUTH AFRICA[/caption]