Travel

Wild, beautiful South Africa offers botanical paradises and animals as you’ve never experienced them

From intimate nature reserves where leopards freely wander to your doorstep, to ’copter views of the ‘Mother City’, Cape Town, South Africa offers visitors a truly transformative experience

Vast patchworks of townships – a sea of rusty corrugated-roofed tumbledown shacks that house up to a third of Cape Town’s population of over four million

The helicopter engine goes from purr to roar and we rise gently from the tarmac, donning headphones to drown out the noise of whirring rotor blades, enjoying the adrenaline rush, and soaring into the sky. Our ’copter’s nose soon points towards iconic Table Mountain, luckily free from cloud cover, a gigantic lump of rock looming ahead.

A 12-minute helicopter ‘hopper’ tour (that feels an awful lot longer) from Cape Town’s Victoria and Alfred Waterfront helipad ...