Cape Town: Aquila Game Drive & Wine Tasting from Hotel

★★★★★★★★★★ 4.50 (18 reviews)

Free cancellationExcellent quality

1/11

Duration8h

GroupUp to 15

LanguagesEN

PickupAt your hotel

Three Hours in the Bush, Two Hours Back: Cape Town's Game Drive & Wine Loop

You get picked up from your Cape Town hotel and driven two hours through wine country to Aquila game reserve, where you spend up to three hours on a safari with a ranger, stop for a leg-stretch and wine break, eat two buffet meals, and return via a winery tasting. The whole day is about eight to nine hours, and the drive itself is half the experience—mountain passes, valleys, and fynbos vegetation that you won't see anywhere else.

Step-by-step itinerary

Safari and wine tasting near Cape Town

Drive through Cape Town wine regions
Pass Stellenbosch and Paarl wine estates
Pass Franschhoek and Du Toitskloof tunnel
Pass Worcester and Hex Valley wine regions
Arrive at Aquila game reserve
Welcome drink and registration
Buffet breakfast
Safari game drive with photo stops
30-minute break with wine
Buffet lunch
Optional swim in pool
Drive back via winery for wine tasting
Return to Cape Town hotel

The Experience

The sound hits you first on the game drive—not roaring, but the low rumble of the van cutting through dry grass, then silence when the ranger cuts the engine. You're at Aquila game reserve, roughly 120 kilometers from Cape Town, and the animals move on their own schedule, not yours. The drive there takes two hours through the wine regions of Stellenbosch, Paarl, and Franschhoek, passing through the Du Toitskloof tunnel and into valleys that shift from vineyards to fynbos—that unique floral kingdom that exists nowhere else on earth quite like this. It's the smallest of the world's six floral kingdoms but holds the most plant diversity, which means the landscape keeps changing even when you're not moving.

At Aquila, you start with a welcome glass of wine before registration, then a buffet breakfast in the lodge. The safari itself runs up to three hours with a qualified ranger who knows where to find the animals and when to stop so you can photograph them properly. There's a 30-minute break mid-drive where you stretch your legs and have another glass of wine—which sounds indulgent until you realize you've been sitting still, watching, for an hour and a half. After the game drive comes a hearty buffet lunch, and if you want, a dip in the swimming pool before the return journey. The drive back to Cape Town takes another two hours, and on the way you stop at one winery for a tasting before your hotel drop-off.

What makes this different from a straight game drive is the route itself. You're not flying in or taking a short hop—you're traveling through the Western Cape's wine country, passing Paarl (home to Paarl Rock, one of the two biggest single rock outcrops in the world) and Franschhoek, where Nelson Mandela spent his last three years of imprisonment before release. The landscape tells a story as much as the animals do. The fynbos vegetation, the mountain passes, the orchards and vineyards—they're all part of the same day, which means you're not just doing one thing. You're moving through the region, not parachuting into it.

What’s included

Hotel pickup and drop-off in Cape Town, air-conditioned van transport, buffet breakfast and lunch, welcome drinks and bottled water, up to three hours on the game drive with a qualified ranger, a 30-minute break with wine during the safari, access to the swimming pool at Aquila lodge, and a wine tasting at one estate on the return drive.

Good to know

Easy physical levelStroller friendlyInfant seats availablePublic transport nearbyInfants must sit on laps

Operated by Ordain Hove

Is this one for you?Book this if you want to see wild animals without arranging your own transport or managing the timing of multiple stops—the fixed itinerary handles the drive, the game reserve, the meals, and the wine tasting in one day, leaving you only to show up at your hotel at pickup time.