Cape Town
The Reason Most Long Haul Visitors Come To South Africa: A City Wedged Between A Mountain And Two Oceans, With The Bo Kaap'S Painted Streets And Cape Malay History, The V&A Waterfront, Camps Bay And Muizenberg, The Company'S Garden, Robben Island'S Ferries Leaving From Its Docks, And A Peninsula Of Beaches, Penguins And Winelands Within An Hour'S Drive · Cape Town, Western Cape
Cape Town is wedged between a thousand-metre mountain and two oceans, and the geography does most of the work. The City Bowl sits in a natural amphitheatre under Table Mountain's north face; thirty minutes one way are the Atlantic beaches at Camps Bay and Llandudno, thirty the other are the warmer False Bay waters at Muizenberg and the penguin colony at Boulders. Inland an hour are the Winelands. In the middle of it all is a city with a complicated history on open display: the Bo-Kaap's painted houses and Cape Malay cooking, the Company's Garden laid out by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, District Six's deliberately empty ground, and the ferries to Robben Island leaving from the V&A Waterfront. It is also a city with real violent crime that is very unevenly distributed, which this row addresses plainly rather than leaving you to find out. For most long-haul visitors Cape Town is the reason the trip happens at all.
On Table Bay between Table Mountain and the Atlantic, with the City Bowl under the mountain and the Cape Peninsula running south, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
A city, not a site - the streets, beaches and mountain roads are open at all hours and the museums and the cableway are the parts with gates. The V&A Waterfront trades late daily; the Company's Garden and the public parks are daylight; Robben Island ferries run from the Waterfront in weather-dependent sailings that sell out in season and should be booked well ahead. Table Mountain's cableway has its own row and CLOSES FOR WIND with no notice, so check the same morning. LOAD-SHEDDING has repeatedly cut power in blocks across the city and affects traffic lights, lifts and card machines; it is a changeable fact rather than a schedule. Beaches have lifeguards in the southern summer only. Driving is the practical way around; the MyCiTi buses cover the main corridors and metered taxis and e-hailing work well in the central areas.