South Africa Accommodation / Find hotels guest houses b&b and self-catering accommodation

Today Gauteng is an almost continuous urban-industrial sprawl. For the visitor to this province its main attractions lie in the art galleries, museums, shops, theatresi and restaurants of Johannesburg and Pretoria, its political capital, and the people and historic interest of Soweto.

Accommodation Western Cape
South Africa’s oldest city, Cape Town was founded by the first Dutch settlers who landed on the top of Africa in April 1652. Set beneath the majestic Table Mountain and its flanking peaks and the broad sweep of Table Bay, Cape Town was described by Sir Francis Drake as “the fairest cape in all the circumference of the earth”.

Among the top attractions are the wide choice of eating and drinking places, excellent hotels, craft markets and speciality shops, a lively calendar of arts, superb beaches, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, Table Mountain and its cableway, and the Peninsula’s unique mountain and coastal scenery.

Unlike the rest of South Africa, the Western Cape has a Mediterranean climate, with mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. The Western Cape is home to some of the country’s oldest towns and buildings in the country.

Visitors come here to enjoy the sheer natural beauty of the Cape, hike its mountains, tour its wine farms, soak up the atmosphere of its small country towns and relax on its superior beaches.

Accommodation Eastern Cape
The superbly scenic Garden Route provides a gateway from the Western into the Eastern Cape, a region steeped in a history of contact and conflict between the Xhosa people and European settlers. Grahamstown will fascinate those interested in the past while nature-lovers will want to head for the Addo Elephant National Park and the vast empty beaches of the Wild Coast.

It is an enchanting shoreline of lovely bays, high cliffs and wide estuaries with a hinterland of mountains, spectacular passes, rivers, waterfalls and wooded ravines, while the lagoons and lakes around Knysna and Wilderness are magical. Here you’ll find good hotels and eating places; pleasant villages, resorts and marinas; and a warm ocean that beckons bather, yachtsman and angler. Further inland is Oudtshoorn and the Little Karoo a region that has its own special fascination.

Accommodation KwaZulu-Natal
Known as the “garden province” of South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal is a well-watered land of rolling green hills and a magnificent Indian Ocean coastline stretching some 370 miles (600 kilometres) from Mozambique in the north to the Umtamvuma River in the South. Much of the region’s northern half is occupied by the historic territory of Zululand: inland the countryside rises to the foothills and then to the massive heights of the Great Escarpment known as the Drakensberg mountains.

Durban is the province’s largest city, Pietermaritzburg its capital and 9 km to the west vies with Ulundi in the heart of Zululand for provincial capital status. KwaZulu-Natal’s predominantly rural economy is based on the vast sugar-cane plantations along its seaboard. Other major commodities include tropical and subtropical fruits (pineapples and bananas), dairy products, timber and maize. Coal is mined in the Newcastle area.

Black and white rhino are the main attraction of the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi park, while hippo, pelican and flamingo draw nature-lovers to the Greater St Lucia Wetland, declared a World Heritage Site in 1999.

Accommodation Mpumalanga
The low-lying plains below the Escarpment is occupied in large part by the Kruger National Park and bordering private game reserves. However, an important agricultural industry flourishes around the towns of Nelspruit and White River, in the fertile Crocodile River Valley, where farmlands yield an abundance of subtropical fruits, vegetables and tobacco.

The glory of the region is its outstanding national parks. Visitors flock to the Kruger National Park in the hope of seeing Africa’s Big Five, and to the Blyde River Canyon for its breathtaking views.

Accommodation Limpopo
This is a land of marvellous diversity, a spectacular compound of forest-mantled massifs and high buttresses, sculpted peaks and deep ravines, crystal streams and delicate waterfalls and of green valleys along which flow many rivers and their multiple tributaries.

Perhaps the most breathtaking view site in the entire Escarpment is God’s Window, a gap in the high mountains rampant near the southern extremity of the Kruger National Park.

Accommodation Northern Cape
The Northern Cape is noted for its San rock art, diamond diggings, 4X4 safaris and the Kgalagadi Wildlife Park. It is a stretch of semi-desert land. The distance from the capital, Kimberley, on the eastern border to Sprinkbok (in the west) is more than 900km. It is a large, dry region of fluctuating temperatures and varying topographies. As the most arid part of South Africa it offers the visitor an experience that is not elsewhere available.

The Northern Cape is a land of many diverse cultures, of frontier history and brave missionaries. It also has countless challenges for the adrenaline junkies, hikers, hunters and 4x4 adverturers.

It has impressive parks with endless game and one of the most unique flora in the world.

Accommodation North West Province
The North West Province of South Africa covers 118,797 sq km (45,869 sq miles), and was created in 1994 by the merger of Bophuthatswana, one of the former bantustans (or black homelands), and the western part of Transvaal, one of the four former South African provinces.

The mainstay of the economy of North West Province is mining, which generates more than half of the province's gross domestic product and provides jobs for a quarter of its workforce. The chief minerals are gold, uranium, platinum and diamonds. The northern and western parts of the province have many sheep farms and cattle and game ranches. The eastern and southern parts are crop-growing regions that produce maize (corn), sunflowers, tobacco, cotton, and citrus fruits. The entertainment and casino complex at Sun City and Lost City also contributes to the provincial economy.

Accommodation Free State
The Free State is South Africa’s Cinderella province. Every country has one – the place you make jokes about! The Free State is a totally landlocked province so it doesn’t have Cape Town’s beaches and its economy is based on large scale maize and cherry agriculture and mining, neither of which are particular decorative. However – it is seriously underrated.

Here there are lovely mountainous areas in the east where the dramatic sandstone cliffs are bright green rolling grasslands form the foothills of the Maluti Mountains. There is great hiking and mountain biking in the hills and the scenery is awesome. Small towns such as Clarens are idyllic little hideaways with a significant population of artists, crafters and other rat-race refugees and many lovely old houses are built from the glowing golden sandstone.

Here for rentals - property to rent