Imagine seeing the world’s largest man-made forest from the air. Imagine flying over a prehistoric crater and seeing – as you cannot see when you are on the ground – the concentric rings of ancient impact where a meteor hit the earth. Then look at the skyline of Johannesburg, the highways, shops, suburbs, skyscrapers and mine dumps from a completely new perspective.  

This is the philosophy behind the Golden City Guided Tour and Safari flight – the first and only guided Gauteng tour conducted mainly in the air. It was the brainchild of William Cook, a pilot, tourist guide, retired motor-industry executive, chef, chauffeur and dishwasher.

“When I retired five years ago, I wanted to do something fun,” he says. “At the suggestion of a friend I did a tour-guide course and it changed my life. I realised that I never knew all that much about Gauteng, and that the history was fascinating. The most eye-opening thing was learning about the history of Soweto, we never understood what was really going on there. I decided I wanted to share this stuff with visitors.”

William has been flying since 1973, therefore when it came for him to design his tours, he thought:  “Why not do it from the air?” So Cook’s Air Tours lifted off.

At first glimpse, the prices of the tours might seem a little high-flying, but William explains that they are very good value for money: “It’s a low-level flight in a Cessna Caravan. Everyone gets a window-seat so they can see what the qualified tour guide is talking about. Before we take off, the visitors get a full briefing about what they will see and experience, in the context of the history of Johannesburg and Pretoria and the impact of these two cities on the history of the whole of South Africa. The best thing about looking at this history from the air is that it is then so easy to see how cities were formed, how geological structures came about. Flying over Parktown really gives you an idea about how large the forest actually is, and from the air you can see the grandeur of the Randlord’s houses. You’ll be able to see things that you have never been able to see before.”

The flight itinerary includes the 200 000-year-old Tswaiing Crater, Alexandra and Soweto, Gold Reef City, George Harrison Park (where gold was first discovered in 1886), the World Cup stadiums, Sandton City, Kyalami race track, the Voortrekker Monument, Cullinan Diamond Mine and everything in between. These are all used in the tour as concrete symbols of seminal events in South African history, from the pre-historic to the present day.

For those who are interested, Gauteng indeed has a tumultuous history, from the vast inland sea an unthinkable time ago when gold was first laid down by wave action, to the last minute-and-a-half of recorded time (if the history of the world was compressed into a 24-hour day, man’s recorded history would occupy the last few seconds before midnight). It was actually the gold discoveries in the Eastern Transvaal that brought gold-diggers to South Africa. The eastern goldfields played out rapidly, but the left-over prospectors were still gold crazy and prospected the country flat in their spare time. 

When George Harrison reported a significant find of gold in March 1886 on the Witwatersrand, the gold rush that ensued was the largest and most delirious in the world. The town grew so fast that people who unwarily parked wagons or carriages would return to find their conveyances hemmed in by newly-built shacks. The wagons would have to be dismantled to extricate them.

This frenzy that resulted in the largest, richest and buzziest city in Africa is shown to perfection from the air, and it is almost impossible to believe that a metal that really is only useful as a conductor of electricity and for slow tarnishing can create such a busy sprawl. Almost all of Johannesburg’s features originate from gold mining – the largest man-made forest came about because mine bosses planted thousands of trees for pit-props and building materials.

The flight lasts for about an hour and a half, and then the plane touches down at the Dinokeng Game Reserve for a half-hour game drive.  unch is served at a boat house with a view over a reeded and bechannelled lake that is very similar to the Okavango in Botswana. 

Binoculars are recommended for the birdwatching, game watching, and for spotting interesting things from the air. The price includes the snack box, a qualified tour guide, two pilots, the driver, the road transfer and game drive, airport and departure taxes, and the lunch at the boathouse.

William, as a commercial pilot, also flies people to Chobe, Zimbabwe and Kruger and conducts a number of airborne tours to other parts of the country, as you can see on his website  www.cooksairtours.co.za