On Monday, 9 December, we had an early breakfast and had a great day exploring. Two of the internationally notable landmarks in Cape Town are Table Mountain and Cape Point, both of which we were lucky enough to visit on our first day. We were excited to see that we could catch a part of the view of Table Mountain from our hotel window!

Tourism is the largest economy in Cape Town and there are lots of airbnbs. Summertime is very hot with little rain but we were there at the beginning of summer and the temperature was comfortably warm, and it was sunny. There are 51 million people in South Africa, 6 million of whom live in Cape Town, the legislative capital. South Africa has a federal system of government, with authority divided between national, provincial, and local levels. Only 10% of the population wasallowed to vote until 1994 at the end of apartheid and 85% of the population live outside the towns.

It is the country’s oldest city but second in size to Johannesburg. It is really magnificent and it’s not surprising that it was named the best place in the world to visit by the New York Times in 2014 and similarly ranked number one by The Daily Telegraph in both 2016 and 2023. 

South Africa has twelve official languages and a multilingual population, fluent in at least two. Zulu and Xhosa are the languages spoken by the largest number of inhabitants, and English is spoken at home by fewer than one in ten people, most of them not white. However, over 40% of people in Cape Town speak Afrikaans as their first language, along with English and Xhosa. We heard people speaking the Khoisan language, known for their use of clicks as consonants. We asked our driver on our second excursion whether he understood this language and he gave us a demonstration. 

Cape Town is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and False Bay to the south. It is located at approximately the same latitude as Sydney in the southern hemisphere and Los Angeles in the northern hemisphere. Although many people think that the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet in Cape Town, they do, in fact, meet three hours’ drive further south at Cape Algulhas, renowned as one of the best fishing grounds in South Africa.

We only had a small group for our first day, two from Greece (who didn’t speak much English so might have found it hard to grasp all the nuances), three from Australia, Di, also from Australia, and me. We set off immediately for Table Mountain and ascended to the very top in the Cable Car (rather than hiking which is the only other way to reach the top). We only had an hour to enjoy the spectacular views and to wander through the maintained paths. We were lucky enough to have struck a completely cloudless day. We had been warned that clouds that form over Table Mountain are known as the ‘Tablecloth’ which is a dramatic cloud formation and could easily spoil the experience. We did notice that the ‘Tablecloth’ descended later in the day, but not while we were up there. 

The most common vegetation type in the Table Mountain National Park is called fynbos, meaning fine bush. It is home to nineteen different vegetation types. Several of these are endemic to the city and occur nowhere else in the world. Some of the shrubs, like proteas and ericas, are well known in New Zealand but there are many, many more that are unique and exciting. Fynbos is an ancient and unique vegetation that has developed over millions of years with some plants dating as far back as 60 million years. 

Leaving Table Mountain above us, we set off for the Cape of Good Hope, the most southerly point of South Africa. The first European to reach the cape was the Portuguese explorer, Bartolomeu Dias in 1488. He named it the Cape of Storms but when Vasco da Gama navigated the same route and sailed down the coast of Africa, successfully opening a new trading route for Europe with India and the Far East, King John II of Portugal renamed it the Cape of Good Hope because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route. In 1580, Sir Francis Drake called it ‘the Fairest Cape in all the World’.

There are two lighthouses at Cape Point, the old lighthouse was built in 1859 and still stands 238 metres above sea level. Unfortunately, its height above sea level made it invisible to shipping in foggy conditions and violent storms and dangerous rocks caused shipwrecks around the coastline. After the sinking of the Portuguese Liner, Lusitania, in 1911, a new lighthouse was commissioned and completed in 1919 only 87 metres above sea level and this greatly improved its effectiveness. In addition, the light of the new Cape Point lighthouse is the most powerful on the South African coast with a range of 63 kilometres and an intensity of 10 megacandelas in each flash.

The drive south was inland and passed through many interesting towns and countryside but the drive back was mostly coastal, taking the road through Chapman’s Peak Drive, a 9km road with 144 bends, often affected by the weather with a toll to help to pay for its upkeep. 

On the way to Cape Point, we passed through the Cape of Good Hope nature reserve which presents as a fairly barren landscape. We were warned by our driver to keep our windows closed as we passed through the reserve as the baboons are plentiful. They are scavengers and will take advantage of food and garbage from humans and can be aggressive. We took his advice but did stop to enjoy seeing an ostrich with her young.

As we drove back across the Park, we saw both the Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama monuments. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias, a Portuguese mariner and explorer, became the first European navigator to round the southern tip of Africa and to demonstrate that the most effective southward route for ships lay in the open ocean, well to the west of the African coast. It was Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer and nobleman who was the first European to reach India by sea in 1497. His initial voyage to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans. 

We enjoyed many wonderful sites on both routes, like Rhino Bay where we were able to pose for more photos, towns with names like Llandudno, the most expensive area in Cape Town, the very pretty Simon’s Town with its military base, and the Victoria and Alfred House, and Bertha’s where we had lunch. We were told that all buildings over 100 years old in South Africa are protected and their exteriors cannot be changed. We went through a town called Scarborough (town names reflect the English settlers), saw a few shipwrecks, a town called Fish Hoek, where the owner of the land gave it for development on condition that no alcohol could be sold there, Muizenberg Beach, considered to be the main surfing spot in Cape Town and the scene of an attack on a surfer by a Great White Shark in 2014, Bounder’s Beach and the penguin colony. 

It was a very long day out, full of fascinating sights and we were bursting with new information by the time we arrived back at our hotel.