Cape Point and the Cape Peninsula

Within The UNESCO Cape Floral Region Protected Areas Inscription (2004), The Same Listing As Table Mountain: Two Hundred Metres Of Cliff At The End Of The Peninsula With A Funicular And Two Lighthouses Above A Coast That Has Wrecked Ships For Five Centuries, Reached Past The African Penguin Colony At Boulders And Along Chapman'S Peak, One Of The Great Coast Roads · Cape Town, Western Cape

The Cape Peninsula runs sixty kilometres south from Cape Town and ends in a two-hundred-metre cliff with two lighthouses on it. Cape Point is not the southernmost tip of Africa - that is Cape Agulhas, a hundred and fifty kilometres east - and the row says so, because the claim is made constantly. What it is instead is the dramatic end of a peninsula, in a nature reserve inside the Cape Floral Region World Heritage listing, reached along one of the great coast roads: Chapman's Peak cut into the cliff face above the Atlantic, the African penguin colony at Boulders Beach where you walk a boardwalk a metre from nesting birds, and then fynbos, eland, ostrich and empty white beaches on the way to the point itself. There is a funicular if you do not want the climb. The baboons are the one real problem: they open car doors, they have been fed into aggression, and people are hurt by them every year.

At the southern end of the Cape Peninsula 70 km from central Cape Town, with Boulders Beach and Chapman's Peak on the way, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

The Cape of Good Hope section of Table Mountain National Park keeps daylight hours with a conservation fee at the gate, shorter in winter, and the gate shuts firmly - get the time there rather than relying on anything written. Boulders Beach is a separate section with its own fee and its own gate at Simon's Town. The funicular to the upper lighthouse runs through the day and stops in high wind. Chapman's Peak drive is a toll road that CLOSES FOR ROCKFALL AND HIGH WIND, sometimes for days, so check before planning a loop around it. There is a restaurant and shop at the point. NEVER LEAVE FOOD VISIBLE IN A CAR ANYWHERE IN THE RESERVE and keep windows shut where baboons are. A full day from Cape Town by hire car is the normal arrangement; organised peninsula tours run daily.

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