Travel Destinations South Africa

Rugby is one of South Africa's big three sports, alongside soccer and cricket. For the many South African fans of the game, rugby is a serious matter, a source of bursting pride and joy – or of shattering disappointment. The major sports in which South Africa excels are the aristocratic British games of rugby and cricket. But it is football (or soccer, as it is universally called here) that has won the hearts of the black majority. South Africa offers some of the world’s toughest endurance races, including the Comrades Marathon (up a steep 90 kilometer incline between coastal Durban and mountainous Pietermaritzburg) and the Two Oceans, which wends its way amidst the mountains around Cape Town. Both races draw tens of thousands of competitors from all over the world, every year.

Facts, Icons and Landmarks

South Africa is the world's 25th-largest country (after Mali). It is comparable in size to Colombia, and is nearly twice the size of the US state of Texas.
South Africa is a very racially diverse nation. It has the largest population of people of Coloured (i.e. mixed racial background), whites, and Indian communities in Africa. Black South Africans account for slightly less than 80% of the population.
South Africa has a great variety of climate zones, from the extreme desert of the southern Namib in the farthest northwest to the lush subtropical climate in the east along the border with Mozambique and the Indian ocean. Njesuthi in the Drakensberg at 3,408 m is the highest peak in South Africa.
Cape Town has become an important retail and tourism centre for the country, and attracts the largest number of foreign visitors in South Africa.
South African cuisine is heavily meat-based and has spawned the distinctively South African social gathering known as a braai. South Africa has also developed into a major wine producer, with some of the best vineyards in the world lying in valleys around Stellenbosch, Franschoek, Paarl and Barrydale.