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Voted No.1 in 2024 and No.2 in 2025 by Travel+Leisure After you’ve left Cape Town and before you reach the beginning of the Garden Route, there’s a beautiful stretch of land with picturesque towns dotted among rolling hills, seaside hamlets overlooking white sands and frothy waves, and stunning wildlife and nature reserves that even the locals don’t know about. This is the Western Cape Overberg region, one of the lesser explored parts of South Africa, and one that you should add to your itinerary now. It’s a photographer’s dream, there’s wildlife aplenty and, to top it all, you may well be the only people there – really!
South Africa's third-oldest town sits at the foot of the Langeberg Mountains in the heart of the Overberg, and it is, in the best possible way, exactly what it looks like: oak-lined streets, whitewashed walls, thatch roofs, gardens spilling over fences, and a pace that hasn't been in any particular hurry since 1743. The Drostdy Museum anchors the heritage end of things – a beautifully preserved magistrate's complex with yellowwood floors and cow-dung kitchen finishes that no restoration project would dare invent. But the town is lived-in and unstuffy, with good restaurants, art galleries and pottery studios tucked between the historic buildings. Bontebok National Park lies minutes away, its fynbos plains grazed by the once near-extinct bontebok and Cape mountain zebra, while the Marloth Nature Reserve offers everything from a riverside stroll to a demanding six-day traverse of the Langeberg ridge.
Tucked away in the Overberg, a three-hour drive from Cape Town, this coastal reserve remains gloriously under the radar. The setting is dramatic: towering white dunes sweep down to a pristine 70-kilometre shoreline, while inland, the De Hoop Vlei – South Africa's oldest Ramsar wetland – shimmers with flamingos and pelicans. From June to November, southern right whales arrive from Antarctica to calve in the protected waters, with up to 350 visible at once from the heights of Koppie Alleen. The Potberg cliffs shelter the Western Cape's last remaining colony of Cape vultures.
Namibrand, Namibia