Here's your essential guide to getting the best out of a holiday in Cape Town.
Location nickname: The Mother City
Don't miss: Table Mountain
Best avoid: Woodstock at night
Don't miss: Ostrich omelette
Best avoid: Koeksisters - actually delicious but your arteries will cry
African Penguins: Comical, noisy and, it has to be said, stinky, African penguins inhabit several breeding sites on the Cape Peninsula. Most popular is Boulder's Beach where a solitary pair sighted in 1983 has given rise to almost 3,000 birds today. Stony Point's more rugged habitat has fewer visitors but still offers good penguin viewing.
Camps Bay: Visible from Table Mountain this wide arc of upmarket white sand is a place for beautiful people to see and be seen. However, if your beach body workout regime hasn't quite done the trick, relax. Camps Bay's Victoria Road is lined by myriad fashionable restaurants and bars - just grab a long drink and watch the sunset.
Chapman's Peak Drive: The toll road between Noordhoek and Hout Bay winds for five precipitous miles around 593m Chapman's Peak and showcases some of the Cape's most stunning coastal scenery. A favourite with walkers, bikers, cyclists and even commuting drivers, 'Chappies' offers access to numerous picnic spots, viewpoints and hikes.
Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens: Established in 1913, some 7,000 species form one of the world's most impressive botanical collections. Devoted to South Africa's indigenous flora, Kirstenbosch's 1,300 acres include a canopy walkway, natural woodland and cultivated gardens, including habitats for proteas, native cycads and all the characteristic Fynbos species of the Cape Floral Kingdom.
Robben Island: When Nelson Mandela left prison on foot after 27-years his walk to freedom was an important milestone on the journey towards a new South Africa. Robben Island prison closed in 1996 but now tours led by former inmates facilitate much more comfortable visits to Mandela's maximum-security cell than those envisaged by the apartheid government.
Table Mountain: The backdrop to all life in Cape Town, ascending this unmistakable flat-topped mountain is almost obligatory. You can hike to the 1,086m summit, but most visitors take a five-minute ride aboard the 85-year-old cableway. Rise early to avoid queues but check weather as cableway service is suspended in high winds.
Townships: Langa is the Cape Town's oldest black township, a settlement established as a reservoir for blue-collar, non-white labour. Across South Africa informal low-rent ghettos like Langa, spawned by the economics of apartheid, were never conceived as tourist attractions. However, attitudes have changed. Today's community guided tours are non-voyeuristic and explore the realities of township life.
Victoria & Alfred Waterfront: Conceived as a Victorian deep water port, over the years its warehouses and facilities fell into a sorry state of decline. A 1990s redevelopment revitalised 'The Waterfront', making it the new heart of Cape Town's shopping and entertainment district, home to high-end retailers and over 80 restaurants and bars.
Whales: An hour and a half from Cape Town, the waters of Walker's Bay off Hermanus are favoured nurseries for Humpbacks, Southern Right Whales and Bryde Whales. Expertly-guided whale tours operate on land, by boat and from the air. In the September the town's Whale Festival marks the arrival of up to 200 Southern Right Whales in the bay.
Winelands: By any measure the wines of the Western Cape are New World stars, cabernet sauvignon grapes in particular enjoying the hot summers and wet winters. Here, one of the country's longest established wine routes follows the Eerste River from Stellenbosch where a Mediterranean-style climate has proved ideal for winemaking.
This article has been produced in association with www.talkholiday.com
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article