Cape Town
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About the Destination
Cape Town spreads around the foot of Table Mountain at the southwestern tip of Africa, where the cold Atlantic meets a long, mountainous peninsula that trails south towards the Cape of Good Hope. The setting is the defining fact of the city: the flat-topped mountain and its flanking peaks, the Twelve Apostles, rise straight above the centre and the sea, and the cableway or a morning hike to the summit gives the classic view down over Table Bay and out along the coast.
The city is really a collection of very different places within easy reach of each other. The redeveloped V&A Waterfront sits at the working harbour, with ferries out to Robben Island in the bay. On the Atlantic side, the beaches and cocktail bars of Camps Bay and the sheltered coves of Clifton run beneath the mountain, linked south by the cliff-hugging toll road of Chapman’s Peak Drive. Inland, over the shoulder of the mountain, the Constantia valley holds the oldest wine estates in the country, and beyond the city the winelands of Stellenbosch and Franschhoek are an easy day out. History runs close to the surface here, from Robben Island to the brightly painted houses of the Bo-Kaap.
Because this is the southern hemisphere, the seasons are reversed. The high season is the local summer, from December to February, when the days are long, warm and dry, though the strong southeasterly wind known as the Cape Doctor can funnel over the mountain on the hottest days. Winter, from June to August, is cooler and greener and brings the southern right whales close to the shore along the nearby coast at Hermanus. Beyond the beaches and vineyards, the peninsula offers hiking, surfing, diving and the drive to the Cape itself.
Cape Town suits travellers who want to combine a city, a coastline and a wine country in one stay. For those who want space, a view and a pool, luxury villa rentals in Cape Town concentrate on the Atlantic slopes above Camps Bay and Clifton and in the green quiet of Constantia, most within a short drive of both the mountain and the sea.
