South Africa: Seeking the sun in the new Land Cruiser Prado

I felt a bit like a criminal as I landed in sweltering Maputo. Dressed like a yeti woman in scarves, gloves and a beanie, I’d slunk out of Cape Town at daybreak on a red-eye flight to Joburg en route to Mozambique, leaving my sodden boyfriend and miserable dog to deal with a leaking roof.

It was during that week that Cape Town saw some of the worst weather recorded in recent times. The city had been inundated by torrential rain and whipped by gale-force winds. Roofs had blown off their…