Give your guests a reason to travel beyond safari. Discover why June to September is one of Escape+Explore’s busiest seasons, and how our flexible approach to guiding turns winter in Cape Town into an adventure worth travelling for.
People can spend their whole lives chasing summer.
We look for the ‘best time of the year’ to travel to our bucket-list destination, only to discover that our free time in June coincides with the cold and rainy season. And so we head somewhere else, chasing the sun.
But there’s a mistake in this. Sure, summer lends itself to certain experiences, many of which we prize dearly.
But you’ll never build a snowman in the summer.
At Escape+Explore, June to September is one of our busiest and favourite seasons. Many of our trade partners already recognise the power of combining Cape Town with a winter safari, and over the years we have developed a guiding style that is particularly well suited to the Cape at this time of year.
Rather than simply taking guests to Cape Town’s well-known places, we create private guided tours shaped around the guest and led by local expertise, flexibility, and rich storytelling. In winter, that becomes particularly important. The sea, the wind, the wildlife, and the weather all become part of the decision-making.
And if you’re willing to ride Cape Town’s unpredictable temperament, you can experience something wholly unlike anything else you have before.
So, if a client was considering Cape Town in the colder months, what picture could you paint for them? Here are a few of the moments we’d start with.
Whale Watching and Wayfinding
The Cape coast offers safari-bound guests another wildlife story of migration, breeding, marine ecology, and conservation.
Between June and November is when you’ll get the chance to see that the greatest migrations aren’t limited to land. Every year thousands of Humpback, Bryde’s and Southern Right Whales make the 2000-4000km journey to the shallow waters to mate, calf and raise their young. The Southern Cape is one of only 6 areas in the whole world suitable for land-based whale watching. A true once-in-a-lifetime experience.
But the region is known for something else too.
Why not stop in Hermanus for lunch, or head into the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley for some Pinot Noir or Chardonnay? Not to mention a drive along the exceptionally scenic R44 coastal route in our Adventure Utility Vehicle.
Perhaps the whales are putting on a show. Perhaps the clouds are clearing along the coast. Perhaps the weather suggests a long lunch and a fireplace instead.
The itinerary gives the day direction, but the guide gives it purpose.
The Cape Peninsula and the Edge of Things
The Peninsula is perhaps one of the best examples of this.
This is a wild strip of mountain, ocean, fishing villages, surf breaks, penguins, shipwrecks, baboons, beach tracks, kelp forests, picnic rocks, and weather systems that don’t ask permission before changing your plans.
Which is exactly why it works so well in winter.
The day might start at dawn with hot chocolate and local shark stories while the Atlantic is waking up. Maybe you hit a viewpoint on your way to the beach. And, if the swell is right and the group is game, it becomes a surf lesson at Muizenberg.
Maybe you’ll even be brave enough to try wooden boards shaped with a bit of old-school ocean romance.
Or, stand on ancient cliffs six times older than the Alps. From the birthplace of early human survival (ask us about our new food tours) to the history of trade routes and the battle for spices as the world evolved and finally a perfectly preserved reserve of fynbos, flora and fauna beauty that much like a safari, has to be experienced to be understood. Often moody but always spectacular.
The team in the office is on hand to adapt your day around you, and around the conditions.
Fishing Villages and Penguin Colonies
Then the road starts to bend south.
Kalk Bay appears: a working harbour of wet rope, painted boats, and a kind of coastal chaos that still has salt under its fingernails.
From there, the day can go in several directions.
If the ocean is playing nicely, the adventure may lean towards the water. A paddle. A kayak. A stand-up board.
If the weather isn’t playing ball, you can head a little further to Simon’s Town and visit Boulders Beach. Here, you meet the endangered African penguins living within a fragile coastal system that needs care, space, and respect.
Or perhaps you could visit the South African Naval Museum or the Simon’s Town Museum and learn about Just Nuisance, the only dog ever to be officially enlisted in the Royal Navy.
This is the magic of the Peninsula. There is so much to see, and while you see it, there are so many things to do. Even in winter months, the Peninsula persuades you to participate.
Which is why calling it a ‘drive’ feels almost… rude.
Wine, Fireplaces and Mildly Reckless Scooters
If the ocean isn’t your thing, or you’re spending even more time in Cape Town (which, by now, you’re obviously realising everyone should), then the Winelands have their own winter rhythm.
An instant winter win is fewer crowds on clear sunny days, and the chance to have lunch beside a fireplace with views of snow-capped mountains and vines.
Sure, those hot summer days are great for sipping your Sauvignon Blanc on the deck.
But trying a Pinotage by the fire and looking beyond the valley into the crisp air, mist over the vines in the wintry light, listening to winemakers fresh from harvest with new releases to discuss? We love the sun, but it can’t give you that.
Add one of our Hop On Wine Specialists, and you’re travelling the Winelands with a private sommelier. Or, should you find this all too polite and sedentary, put the wine glass down for a minute, jump onto a freewheeling scooter, and roll down the gentle slopes of Chamonix Wine Farm with the Franschhoek Valley opening up around you.
There’s not much more to say about that other than ‘cheers’.
The Secret Is in the Guiding
The same Peninsula road, the same penguin colony, the same vineyard can become two entirely different experiences depending on who is facilitating and leading the day.
This is where winter really speaks to the Escape+Explore approach.
Our guides are here to connect the mountain to the city, the ocean to the safari, the penguins to conservation, the Winelands to soil and season, the food to migration and memory, and the weather to the day’s activities.
A winter itinerary needs to be responsive, because the best moment may not be where the original itinerary said it would be. Our guiding leaves space for that.
Which is why June to September is one of our busiest and favourite seasons. We’ve built Cape experiences for travellers who are already coming to South Africa for extraordinary wildlife, landscapes, and stories, and who want the Cape to feel like a continuation of that adventure.
Give Cape Town Its Own Chapter
Winter travel in South Africa is often discussed through a single dominant lens: safari.
It makes sense. The bush is dry. Wildlife viewing can be exceptional.
Our trade partners get that.
And that is precisely why Cape Town and beyond work so well alongside it.
The Cape is the urban, coastal, cultural, and natural-history extension of the safari journey itself. It is mountain, ocean, fynbos, food, wine, whales, weather, history, humour, salt, firelight, and road.
The safari may be one extraordinary chapter of the journey.
Give the Cape one of its own.
