SOUTHERN STAR

From Cape Town's cosseting hotels and the culinary pleasures of the Winelands to dramatic wildlife sightings at Sabi Sand, a classic South African itinerary reveals a nation primed for transformation.

- Chris Wallace

ON A CLOUDLESS DAY last April, Cape Town looked from above like a massive sandstone amphitheater. A colossal, flat-topped mountain tumbled steeply down toward the beaches to form a bowl in which the city lay. It was autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, but from a helicopter, the sea looked almost Hawaiianturquoise and deep sapphire, roiling with sharks and humpback whales. The pearly beachfront hotels, too, might have been on the coast of Maui, but for the swooping, elliptical football stadium nearby, an icon of the city since it was built for the 2010 World Cup.

Seen from even farther afield-in the pages of history books, say-Cape Town can seem a veritable Ultima Thule, a bountiful Eden at the southernmost tip of South Africa, where traders on the spice route stopped to revictualize their ships halfway between Europe and Asia. The city sits on a crescent-shaped cove, with the Cape of Good Hope extending toward the antipodal south-which makes for the disorienting experience of being at the southern tip of Africa and, if you are facing the marina, watching the sun set to your left.