If Johannesburg has a business culture and Cape Town has a culture culture, Durban has a beach culture. Even the high-rise offices look out over the Indian Ocean, and busy executives hang up their suits and ties, slip into shorts, and jog along the beachfront at lunchtime. Many keep a surfboard in their cars and catch a quick wave before or after work (or both).

The Durban beachfront is a cultural experience. Here you will find holidaying families, young surfer brats (grommets), Indian ladies elegantly walking the sand in flowing silken saris, beaded traditional healers collecting bottles of seawater to use as muti (medicine) and young girls strutting their stuff in the skimpiest of bikinis. Somehow it all works in one, pretty weird, decidedly heterogeneous whole.

The sea really does play an important part - there are two yacht clubs and one very big commercial harbour. The Bat Centre, Durban's most interesting cultural venue, overlooks the small boat harbour where stubby-nosed tugs come to rest after a hard morning pushing tankers around. You can also lunch virtually in the shadow of huge container ships and cruise liners as they enter the harbour through the narrow entrance in front of the Bluff.

Shopping is a special experience in Durban - the eastern influence of the enormous Indian population adds a touch of spice, literally and figuratively. You can explore the Indian Market or just wander down Grey Street, where you'll find all kinds of interesting little shops. At the beachfront itself, you will find wonderful examples of traditional beadwork and basketry for sale at incredibly low prices. For something more upmarket, and very interesting, you just have to see the Gateway Shopping Centre. It's so much more than your average mall. It has a climbing wall and an enormous artificial standing wave - the first artificial double-point break in the world.

Of course, Durban is really about surfs . Another fun thing to do is to paddle out on a sea kayak, or even do a short, gentle white water trip on the nearby Umgeni River. Some of the hardest climbs in South Africa are at the Wave Cave at nearby Shongweni, and there are some fun bolted routes in the Kloof Gorge. The diving just south of the city is great. In winter and early spring, migratory ragged tooth sharks (Carcharias tauras) are in residence at Aliwal Shoal, and can be visited on a specially organised dive. But there are also a lot of coral-encrusted rock reefs with pretty tropical fish for the less intrepid. For the hardcore diver, Protea Banks is a must.

Johannesburg is the major international gateway into South Africa so you are quite likely to spend, at the very least, a few hours here. It's a vibrant and dynamic place with a throbbing pulse and an awesome sense of rhythm. Everyone is on the move - doing business, making money, jogging, going to gym, cycling, partying till late, eating out, and attending shows, movies and exhibitions. If you're a city person, you will love Johannesburg.

The older part of the city is developing an interesting character - in parts somewhat neglected, and in parts humming with a new kind of vibrancy. It is the de facto capital of Africa - in the centre of Johannesburg, you will find people from all over the continent, and in some pretty unusual and out-of-the way venues, you can sample their cuisine and jive to their music - not for the faint of heart, though.

Also in the city centre is the Civic Theatre, and the Newtown Cultural Project, with Museum Africa. But the head offices of major corporations, and the majority of businesses, have moved out to the northern suburbs and to Midrand - the burgeoning industrial, commercial, semi-agricultural and residential area halfway between Johannesburg and Pretoria. The northern suburbs radiate a sense of opulence and prosperity. The many shopping malls carry a vast range of high quality consumer goods, including many luxuries, and the hundreds of restaurants and coffee shops offer a wide range of fashionable cuisines.

There really is a lot to do in Johannesburg. You could go on an escorted tour of Soweto, which is a mind-expanding experience as you get to see how this resilient community contributed to South Africa's liberation struggle. A visit to Gold Reef City is a fun day out with amusement rides and a reconstructed mining village, but it is a lot more authentic than most theme parks. The trip down a gold mine is a real eye-opener, but that's nothing compared to the paradigm shift many people may experience in visiting the Apartheid Museum, also at Gold Reef City. If you'd prefer something unbelievably beautiful, watch a performance by the Lipizzaner horses on a Sunday morning, at their premises in Kyalami. There are golf courses aplenty. You could do a walking tour to look at some lovely old buildings, or just park off at a coffee shop in a mall and watch the world and its wallet walk past.

Known as the Jacaranda City for all the purple blossom-bedecked trees, which line its thoroughfares, Pretoria is a lovely, quiet city. It has a long, involved and fascinating history. Here you will find many significant old buildings and some fascinating museums. The Transvaal Museum has wonderful natural history displays and is the home of Mrs Ples, the australopithecine fossil found at Sterkfontein in the Cradle of Humankind. Also worth visiting are the Cultural History Museum and the Smuts Museum, in Irene, just outside Pretoria.

The Union Buildings changed overnight from a symbol of white, neo-colonial unity to one of true unity, and the iconic Voortrekker Monument still stands. Ironically, though, the bust of one of apartheid's most ardent supporters, JG Strydom, which stood in Strydom Square near the State Theatre, toppled without any help other than gravity and the erosive quality of time on steel supports - on the fortieth anniversary of the day South Africa became a white-governed republic.

It's a great town - there are many open spaces where you can walk or mountain bike. Nearby is the Premier Game Reserve, next door to the Cullinan Diamond Mine, where the largest diamond in the world was found. You could do a short horse trail at the Voortrekker Monument or through the Premier Reserve, taking a careful look at some white rhino and a number of eland - which are pretty much the size of a big horse. You could do a tandem skydive or a first jump at the Pretoria Skydiving Club, which is the largest in the country.