Photo: Ščenza
Cape Town, South Africa · Africa
Cape Town: the mountain at the end of Africa
Cape Town has a Table Mountain at one end and an ocean at the other. The city in between has the most varied food, wine, and walking on the African continent — and a daily set of contradictions you cannot honestly ignore.
By Ščenza
· updated · 5 min read
It’s 6:30 a.m. and I’m climbing Lion’s Head — the secondary peak west of Table Mountain — for the sunrise. The trail is busy at this hour with Capetonians doing a pre-work hike. A woman in a corporate office suit is walking down past me, having clearly summited an hour ago. A man with a dog passes. The view from the summit — Table Mountain to the east, the Atlantic to the west, the city below — is, in the morning haze, one of the best one-hour walks you can do in any major city on earth.
Why I keep coming back
Cape Town has a mountain at the centre of the city. Table Mountain, a flat-topped sandstone block 1086 m high, rises sheer from the coastal plain and structures the entire urban geometry. The city wraps around its base in three directions; the south side is the long peninsula running down to the Cape of Good Hope. The two oceans (the Atlantic on the west, the warmer Indian on the east) meet just offshore.
The city is also, by a margin, my favourite food city in Africa. Cape Malay cooking from the Bo-Kaap (the historic Muslim quarter of slaves and political exiles from Indonesia and Madagascar), Afrikaner farm cooking from the surrounding winelands, modern South African fusion in the V&A Waterfront and Sea Point — the layers reward a week of eating.
Where to base yourself
De Waterkant or Bo-Kaap for the central historic neighbourhood, walkable to the harbour and the city centre.
Sea Point for the long coastal promenade and the easier evening walks.
Camps Bay for the Atlantic-side beach hotels — touristy, beautiful, expensive.
Constantia if you want a quieter, leafier, vineyard-adjacent base 25 minutes from the centre.
What to actually do
Climb Table Mountain. The Platteklip Gorge trail is the direct three-hour climb; the cable car is the eight-minute alternative (and the most ridden in the world). Conditions change quickly — the famous ‘tablecloth’ cloud can wrap the mountain in minutes. The summit plateau itself takes another hour to walk.
Drive the Cape peninsula. From the centre, south through Camps Bay, along Chapman’s Peak Drive (one of the most beautiful coastal roads in the world), past Hout Bay, down to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. A full day. The penguin colony at Boulders Beach in Simon’s Town is on the way back.
Spend a day in the Cape Winelands. Stellenbosch (the largest, most accessible), Franschhoek (the prettiest), or Constantia (closer to the city, the oldest wine farms in the country). Wine tasting at Tokara, Babylonstoren, Boschendal. Lunch at Reuben’s or La Petite Colombe.
Visit Robben Island. The prison where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 of his 27 years. Half-day. Book in advance; ferries leave from the V&A Waterfront. Solemn and essential.
Walk the Bo-Kaap. The brightly painted hillside neighbourhood of Cape Malay descent; one of the most photographed streets in Africa. Stop at the small Bo-Kaap Museum. Eat at the Biesmiellah Restaurant for genuine Cape Malay food (curries, koeksisters, sosaties).
Surf or kitesurf at Muizenberg or Bloubergstrand. The warmer-water side for surfing; the wind-swept side for kitesurfing.
Where to eat
Cape Town has, in my view, the most exciting restaurant scene in Africa.
La Colombe (Constantia) — Tasting menu, repeatedly Africa’s top restaurant. The Test Kitchen is now closed but The Pot Luck Club (its successor) is still going strong. Wolfgat (Paternoster, 2 hours up the coast) — Tiny, very small-fishing-village seasonal Cape coastal cooking; won World’s Best Restaurant in 2019. Worth the day trip. Biesmiellah (Bo-Kaap) — Authentic Cape Malay; the chicken curry. Kloof Street House — Old-villa contemporary South African. Mzansi (Langa township) — Township home-style dining with a music welcome; tour-included options. A braai — A South African barbecue. The boerewors sausage, the lamb chops, the chakalaka relish. Book a braai-night at a guesthouse, or join one with locals if invited.
When to come
Late October through April is the South African summer — warm, dry, the most reliable weather.
January and February are peak (and most expensive); March and April are the sweet spot.
Winter (June–August) is wet and windy on the Atlantic side but mostly mild; whales come into False Bay (June–November is the calving season).
Practical notes
- Visa: 90 days visa-free for most Western passports.
- Money: South African rand. Card almost universally; cash for tips and small purchases.
- Transport: A rental car is essentially required for the peninsula and winelands. Uber works well in the city. The MyCiTi bus network connects the city, V&A Waterfront, and Sea Point.
- Safety: Cape Town has crime, including violent crime, mostly concentrated in specific areas. Don’t walk on Table Mountain alone; don’t walk after dark in unfamiliar areas; don’t show valuables. The standard urban precautions, slightly heightened.
- The water crisis: Cape Town came close to running out of municipal water in 2018 (the ‘Day Zero’ crisis) and water-conservation norms remain: short showers, no baths in some accommodations. Respect it.
- The ‘two Capetowns’ reality: The city is one of the most beautiful on earth and has one of the most extreme post-apartheid inequalities in the world. Township tourism is available and morally complex; the locally-led tours (Coffeebeans Routes, Andulela) are the better options if you choose to do one.
A final thought
Cape Town is the rare African destination that is, for the first-time Western visitor, almost too comfortable — the food, the wine, the weather, the wineries — and that comfort can mask the more difficult realities of contemporary South Africa. The city is breathtakingly beautiful. The inequalities are vast. Both are true and both belong in the experience.
Go for at least eight days. Climb Table Mountain or Lion’s Head. Drive the peninsula. Spend a day in the winelands. Visit Robben Island. Eat in the townships and in Constantia. Talk to people. The city earns its reputation for beauty and asks you, quietly, to take seriously the difficulty of what surrounds the beauty.
If you only have a few days
7 ideal things to do in Cape Town
Lion's Head at sunrise
Between Table Mountain and Signal HillOrdinary weekday dawn, not the full moon
An hour of walking, spiralling round a 669-metre cone, and at the top you get Table Mountain on one side, the Atlantic on the other and the city sitting in between. Capetonians do this before work — I found that out by being overtaken near the summit by a woman already dressed for a meeting, who was not out of breath. The full-moon climbs are a local ritual and correspondingly packed. A plain Tuesday is better.
Table Mountain by the Platteklip Gorge trail
Tafelberg Road, above the city bowlStart early; the gorge holds no shade at all
The direct route up the front of the mountain, first climbed in 1503 and still the least ambiguous way to the top: a staircase of a gorge, about two and a half hours, and no shade anywhere in it. The plateau on top is a separate country — 1,084 metres at Maclear's Beacon, fynbos in every direction, and the cloud they call the tablecloth arriving over the edge without asking anyone. Take the cable car down if your knees have opinions.
Kirstenbosch and the Boomslang canopy walkway
Eastern foot of Table Mountain, NewlandsSpring for the proteas; summer evenings for the concerts
Established in 1913 on the back slope of the mountain and planted only with indigenous species, which sounds like a restriction until you learn that Table Mountain alone carries 2,285 of them. The Centenary Tree Canopy Walkway, which everybody calls the Boomslang, is a curved steel ribbon that lifts you into the crowns of the trees and flexes just enough that one person in every group announces that it flexes.
Robben Island
Ferry from the V&A WaterfrontBook well ahead; the swell decides the rest
Half a day, most of it spent on a boat and a bus, and the part that matters lasts about fifteen minutes: the limestone quarry where the prisoners worked, and then the cell. Former political prisoners guide the prison section, which is why the tone is right and why this is not the place to be taking photographs of everything. Crossings get cancelled when the sea is up, so leave a spare day in the trip rather than a spare hour.
The District Six Museum
Buitenkant Street, city centreAn hour, longer if you talk to the guides
In the 1970s some sixty thousand people were removed from the neighbourhood on the edge of the centre and the buildings were bulldozed. The ground is still largely empty and you notice that on the drive in without understanding why. The museum is essentially one hall with a street map painted across the floor, and former residents have written on it in pen where their houses stood. It is the least grand museum I have stood in and it undid me faster than any of them.
Bo-Kaap on foot, early
The lower slopes of Signal HillBefore nine; this is a residential street
Cape Malay quarter on the hill, with the Auwal — the oldest mosque in the country, from 1794 — and the steep painted terraces that everyone photographs. Worth knowing beforehand: the colours are a late-twentieth-century idea rather than an eighteenth-century one, a detail no caption anywhere seems to include. People live behind those doors, and by mid-morning the street is being used as a film set, so come at eight and behave as though you are in somebody's front garden, because you are.
Boulders Beach penguins and the drive to Cape Point
Simon's Town, the False Bay side of the peninsulaA full day; save the penguins for last
African penguins turned up at Boulders in 1982 as two breeding pairs and there are a few thousand now, watched from the Foxy Beach boardwalks that put you a couple of metres from birds that are officially critically endangered and visibly unconcerned about it. Pair it with the peninsula drive down to Cape Point. The baboons near the gate will open an unlocked car door, the signs saying so are not decorative, and one of my rental cars could confirm this.
From a Split boy’s notebook
The Split lens
What reminded me of home
City wedged between a serious mountain and the sea. Table Mountain at the centre of Cape Town's geography is structurally what Marjan is for us, at half the height. Both cities have learnt to integrate a mountain into urban daily life — the morning hike before work, the evening sunset walk.
What Split could borrow
Cape Town's coastal walking path runs essentially continuously from Sea Point to Camps Bay. Our coastal promenade is broken — the Riva ends, the Bačvice path ends, the Marjan path ends. A continuous, paved coastal walking-and-cycling path from Sustipan around the peninsula to Žnjan is geographically possible and would be the city's single most loved infrastructure project.
Who can take you
Tour operators & guides to try
A short, opinionated starter list — just my humble opinion. Verify before booking.
&Beyondluxurywww.andbeyond.com →
&Beyond's Cape Town offering is at the upper-end safari-and-city-combo tier — typically Cape Town for 3–4 nights with private guiding, the Cape Peninsula day, the Winelands day, then onward to one of their game reserves. Upper-tier pricing. Caveat: this is a luxury-tier operator and the pricing reflects it; for budget travellers, &Beyond isn't the answer.
Intrepid Travelsmall groupwww.intrepidtravel.com →
Intrepid's South Africa itineraries treat Cape Town as a 3-night chapter on a longer South Africa circuit — Table Mountain, the Cape Peninsula, the Winelands. Group size 12–16. Solid for first-time visitors. Caveat: the township component on some Intrepid trips is sensitively run, on others less so; ask specifically how the township visit is structured and whether the operator is a community-owned cooperative (Coffeebeans Routes is the gold standard).
