Start with a visit to the Apartheid Museum for an emotionally-charged, interactive exhibit of South Africa’s history of segregation and oppression through the 20th century, which will help you understand the challenges the country has faced. Take a guided tour of Soweto— an outskirt settlement for African laborers during the gold mining days before becoming a blacks-only township during apartheid—and visit Mandela House, the former president’s modest home, now preserved as a museum. Try authentic African dishes at 1947 on Vilakazi Street like mogodu (tripe stew) with a side of pap (maize porridge) or chakalaka (spicy tomato-based relish).

Oak-lined Stellenbosch was established in 1679 and is famous for its cabernet sauvignon, merlot, bordeaux blends, and pinotage—the only new grape variety created outside of Europe. The area is home to more than 150 wineries and is filled with a mix of white Cape Dutch buildings and Georgian and Victorian architecture. The town of Franschhoek, established by 18th-century French Huguenots, is cozier and less commercial than Stellenbosch and offers a hop-on, hop-off Wine Tram from which you can visit many of the wineries. Paarl, “The Pearl of the Winelands” is in Drakenstein Valley and is the third oldest town in the country, behind Stellenbosch and Cape Town. It’s considered the birthplace of Afrikaans, one of the country’s eleven official languages, and you can visit the striking monument commemorating its establishment as an official language. Paarl is also famous for innovative blends like white pinotage and tempranillo. If you can’t get a reservation at Eike in Stellenbosch, La Petite Colombe in Franschhoek, or Babylonstoren near Paarl, there are plenty of delicious bistros and restaurants serving innovative tasting menus.

The world’s largest waterfall and one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World is known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya, or “The Smoke That Thunders,” due to its roar and misty spray. It is indeed as colossal and mythical as you’d expect the world’s largest uninterrupted sheet of falling water would be, stretching 5,604 feet (1,708 meters) across and 354 feet (108 meters) high. Two thirds of it sits on the Zimbabwe side and the rest is in Zambia . You can walk around to the varying viewing points, fly over the falls, or get your adrenaline pumping with rafting, ziplining, skydiving, and bungee jumping. If you want something less aggressive, try a sunset cruise on the Zambezi River. Relax with a cocktail and watch hippos, crocodiles, and elephants along the riverbanks.

This UNESCO World Heritage Site is a remote area located in northern Zimbabwe which offers unprecedented opportunities to immerse yourself in the rugged wilderness through guided walking and canoe tours. (You could even walk around without a guide, but that seems exceedingly risky around potential encounters with hippos, crocodiles, elephants, big cats, and wild dogs.) It’s definitely an off-the-beaten path experience that lets you access secret spots on foot. The Mana Pools are four permanent watering holes that support the wildlife, and the forests of acacia, baobab, fig, mahogany, and ebony trees also provide unique habitats.

Discover the ancient city built between 1100 and 1450 that gave the country its name at an amazing archaeological site that stood as the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe means “stone houses” in the Shona language, and you can see the undulating, meticulously stacked walls (built without mortar) of the largest stone complex in Africa built before the modern era (aside from ancient Egypt). Great Zimbabwe was a hub for a global trading network as evidenced by pottery remains from China and Persia and Arabic coins. In their arrogance, European colonisers thought the complex was too sophisticated to be built by Africans and looted and threw away artifacts from the area. It was not until 1980 when Zimbabwe achieved independence that its true origins were confirmed. Conservation and maintenance efforts continue today, but a millennia since it was built, Great Zimbabwe stands as a testament to the engineering prowess, complex society, and economic power of the Shona people.

The Okavango Delta is the main attraction of Botswana, a nutrient-rich ecosystem created by the Okavango River flooding the Kalahari Desert to create waterways, grassland, floodplains, lagoons, and islands during the dry season. The resulting sanctuary for thousands of animals creates a spectacle of teeming wilderness, including African elephants, zebra, red lechwe, buffalo, and antelope. Traverse the crystal-clear waterways in a traditional dugout canoe of the BaYei people called a mokoro to get eye-level with the flora and smaller animals as you glide along unobtrusively.

Makgadikgadi means “vast, lifeless land” in the Setswana language, and the salt pan remains of an evaporated superlake in the Kalahari Desert presents a white, lunar landscape of cracked earth that seems to never end. The silent desolation is awesomely surreal. During the wet season, flamingos breed along the pans and zebras, oryx, and wildebeest migrate to the area to dine on the new grass. In the dry season, you can arrange a trip to meet meerkat colonies that have become habituated to humans and occasionally use them as lookouts.

Travel to the northwest where the desert meets the coast and experience what is referred to as “the end of the Earth.” The Skeleton Coast was named for the 500 shipwrecks and myriad animal bones spat out by the Atlantic Ocean’s killer currents that were left to jut out of the sand in despair. While only a handful of shipwrecks can be seen now, the stark, barren landscape and deterioration of everything made by humans (signs and rusted oil rigs) make this a jaw-dropping adventure in one of the most remote regions in Africa.

The desert is swallowing this once wealthy, German diamond mining town whose hospital had the first x-ray machine in the southern hemisphere. Enter rooms where dunes sweep in through windows and across doorways as if to erase both the colorful wallpaper and man’s hubris. In 1908, diamonds were discovered, and by 1912, the town was producing a million carats a year, almost 12% of the world’s production. Prospectors were getting rich picking loose diamonds off the desert, but by the 1930s they were mined out, and a new deposit was found in the south. Everyone left by 1956. You should visit before the elements take it forever.