Cape Winelands Tour From Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl

The Cape Winelands

Oak lined streets, Cape Dutch gables, Huguenot stories and the passes elephants once walked.

Less than an hour from the city, granite mountains rise around valleys that have barely changed in three centuries. This is where you see the soul of the old Cape.

Stellenbosch, founded in 1679, is the second oldest town in South Africa. Governor Simon van der Stel loved oak trees so much that he lined its streets with them, and the town is still called Eikestad, the City of Oaks, after a tradition more than 300 years old. Walk down Dorp Street, past the village green called Die Braak and the white Moederkerk, and you pass one of the longest rows of historic buildings in the country.

Everywhere you look is Cape Dutch architecture: thick whitewashed walls, thatched roofs and ornate rounded gables, many carrying the date the house was built. These homesteads, set at the end of oak lined avenues against blue mountains, are among the most beautiful buildings in Africa.

Over the Helshoogte Pass lies Franschhoek, the French Corner. In 1688, around two hundred French Huguenot refugees, fleeing religious persecution in France, were given land in this valley, and their surnames, du Toit, de Villiers, Joubert and Rousseau among them, are still everywhere in South Africa. The Huguenot Monument, with its three tall arches and a woman holding a Bible and a broken chain, honours their freedom of faith. Before the Huguenots came, the valley was called Olifantshoek, the Elephant's Corner, because elephant herds crossed the mountains here on their migrations, and the Franschhoek Pass still follows their ancient path.

On the road from Franschhoek to Paarl stands the gate of the former Victor Verster Prison, where Nelson Mandela walked to freedom on 11 February 1990. A bronze statue of him, fist raised, marks the spot where the world watched history change.

In Paarl, named for the giant granite domes that gleam like pearls after rain, one of the largest granite outcrops on Earth looks down over the town. On the slopes above stands the Taal Monument, the Afrikaans Language Monument, its soaring concrete spires celebrating a language shaped by Europe, Africa and the slaves and scholars of the East.

• Stellenbosch, the City of Oaks
• Cape Dutch homesteads and gables
• Helshoogte and Franschhoek mountain passes
• Franschhoek and the Huguenot Monument
• The Mandela statue at Drakenstein
• Paarl Rock and the Taal Monument