Things to Do in South Africa in August

August turns Kruger into a different landscape than the lush green corridor summer visitors encounter. The mopane and combretum woodland has dropped most of its leaves. The grass is cropped and gold-brown. Remaining waterholes act as magnets for everything from breeding herds of elephant to solitary male lions waiting on the tree line for prey that has no choice but to drink. The air smells of dry dust and crushed wild sage kicked up by the vehicle tyres. At sunrise the cold is sharp enough that your breath clouds in front of you while the first impala materialize as silhouettes against the orange horizon. Half-day drives depart at dawn and return by late morning before midday heat sends the cats into shade. The full-day option adds the golden-hour window before sunset, when leopard and hyena start to move. With vegetation this sparse, your sighting-to-kilometre ratio in August is likely the best it gets all year. The trade-off is the cold, which is real. The dust, which coats everything you own by mid-drive.

The stretch of coastline between Hermanus and De Kelders is where Southern Right Whales come to calve between June and November. August sits in the sweet spot before the September to October peak when tour groups overwhelm the cliff paths. Walk the Cliff Path Trail above Walker Bay on a clear August morning. The ocean below is dark enough to catch the white callosities on a whale's head from fifty metres up. You hear them before you spot them sometimes. A deep exhalation like a slow tyre burst. Then the glossy black back rolls through the surface followed, if you are lucky, by a calf half the mother's length mimicking the dive. The fynbos scrub along the trail is in winter flower. The air carries the peppery scent of buchu and salt. Benches sit every few hundred metres where you can sit and glass the bay. Boat-based excursions run from the old harbour when weather permits. The land-based watching here is so good that a boat is a bonus rather than a necessity.

The India Venster route up Table Mountain is the hike that Cape Town locals do when they want to show off their mountain rather than ride the cable car. It scrambles through narrow rock chimneys and exposed sandstone ledges on the east face, with views of the city bowl and harbour expanding below you as you gain altitude. On a clear August morning the light is low and the air is cool enough that you can climb without the sapping heat of summer, the rock smells of lichen and cold stone, and at the top the tablecloth cloud that often pours over the northern edge stays just behind you like a slow-motion waterfall. The catch is weather. Table Mountain creates its own microclimate, and when a cold front rolls in, the summit disappears into zero-visibility fog and the rock becomes slick. Winter adds roughly three to four days per month where the cable car closes and hiking is inadvisable. Watch the forecast. Keep your summit day flexible. Go on the first clear morning that presents itself. When it works, and it usually works at least two or three times a week, the combination of cold air, empty trails, and 360-degree visibility over the Atlantic to Robben Island is the finest urban hike in the Southern Hemisphere.

Stellenbosch and Franschhoek in August are what these towns feel like when the tour buses thin out and the fireplaces come on. The oak-lined streets of Stellenbosch's Dorp Street are quieter, the tasting rooms at the estates along the R44 have space to sit and talk with the sommelier rather than shuffle through a crowded counter pour, and the winter menus at the wine-estate restaurants pivot to slow-braised lamb shanks, oxtail potjiekos simmered in cast iron over coals for four hours, and bobotie with a glossy egg-custard crown and sharp atchar on the side. The vineyards themselves are dormant and stripped to their pruned skeletons, which sounds bleak until you see them on a cold morning with frost on the rows and the Simonsberg peaks sharp-edged against the sky behind them. Franschhoek's Huguenot heritage quarter smells of woodsmoke and baking bread in the mornings, and the galleries and bookshops along the main road reward the kind of slow afternoon that summer's heat makes impossible. The wine being poured is last year's vintage. The cellarmasters are between harvests. They are relaxed.

The uKhahlamba-Drakensberg escarpment in August is dry, cold, and as clear as it gets. The summer haze that smothers the KwaZulu-Natal midlands lifts in winter, and the basalt amphitheatres and sandstone buttresses stand in a kind of geological clarity that summer visitors rarely see. The Amphitheatre above Royal Natal National Park, a sheer 5 km (3.1 mile) wall of rock 1,200 metres (3,937 feet) high, catches the early light and turns from charcoal to rust-orange in the first twenty minutes after sunrise. Trails up to the escarpment edge through Cathedral Peak or Monk's Cowl pass through brown winter grassland crunchy with frost, the streams run low and clear, and the only sound at altitude is the wind and the occasional call of a lammergeier spiralling on the thermals. Night temperatures on the escarpment drop below freezing. The highest peaks sometimes catch dustings of snow. They last a day or two. Accommodation in the park camps and lodges is easier to book in August than during the December school holidays, and you share the trails with a fraction of the foot traffic.

Drive the Garden Route in August. The summer traffic that chokes the N2 between Mossel Bay and Storms River simply vanishes. You get misty mornings in Tsitsikamma forest. Empty beaches at Nature's Valley. The Knysna Lagoon turns to glass under grey skies, then cracks open into afternoon sun. The indigenous yellowwood and stinkwood canopy stays evergreen. The cover is as dense as summer. But the forest floor smells wetter now. More intensely of decomposing bark and moss. The suspension bridges over the river gorge sway in a stillness that summer crowds never allow. Knysna's waterfront serves oysters year-round. In August you eat them at a table by the lagoon. No waiting for a seat. Plettenberg Bay has a second whale-watching chance if you missed Hermanus. The Robberg Peninsula trail, a 9 km (5.6 mile) loop around a headland jutting into the Indian Ocean, ranks among the finest coastal walks in South Africa. Fuel stops along the route feel unhurried. The passes over the Outeniqua Mountains turn dramatic in winter light. The entire 300 km (186 mile) stretch needs two to three days with stops. Take them.