South Africa

South Africa contains more than most countries consider fair: two coastlines meeting at a cape, a winelands that produces some of the world's most serious bottles, a Karoo semi-desert of hallucinatory emptiness, the Drakensberg range, Kruger, Cape Town - a city that regularly defeats people's attempts to leave it. The post-apartheid project is unfinished and the country does not pretend otherwise; that honesty is part of what makes it interesting. Johannesburg is one of the most complex cities on earth and rewards the effort of understanding it on its own terms rather than the world's.

Our guide is being written from the ground up, with the time this place deserves.

We are still gathering the notes that make a guide worth keeping: Cape Town's neighbourhoods, Karoo road stops, Winelands producers and the Joburg restaurants where the new South Africa is being cooked into existence one menu at a time.