Cape Town may not South Africa’s
biggest city, but it’s certainly one of
the most dazzling jewels in its crown.
The proudly multicultural ‘Mother City’
stretches out under the eyes of Table
Mountain’s Lion’s Head – a stunning
sweep of green vineyards, sandy bays
and amazing coastal roads that run
south to the Cape of Good Hope.
TABLE TOPS
It’s impossible to picture Cape Town without its world-famous backdrop
– Table Mountain. The flat-topped mega hill overlooks the whole city!
Sometimes it is swathed in a mysterious tablecloth of clouds. Folktales
say that it is caused by a smoking contest between the Devil and a
local pirate called Van Hunks. It’s a Capetonian rite of passage
to climb the vertical kilometre all the
way up to Devil’s Peak.
GOING TO THE PROM
Sea Point Promenade is a long, wave-splattered,
careless and car-free coastal stretch full of playgrounds
and awesome outdoor artwork like this piece, called
Perceiving Freedom
by Michael Elion, which looks out
over the wild Atlantic to the island on which Nelson
Mandela was imprisoned.
SNAKES AND ADDERS
Hikers in the veld
(scrub) around Cape Town
need to tread with care! The countryside
is home to some highly venomous
vipers, including the Cape cobra and the
puff adder. The boomslang is another
poisonous local, but it’s also the
nickname for a fantastic 130m (427ft)
long tree canopy walkway that
snakes through the city’s colossal
Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens,
at the foot of Table Mountain.
HIGH NOON
Signal Hill, a towering rocky outlook just north of Table
Mountain, has a massive cannon called the Noon Gun.
Every day since 1806 this gun has fired a single shot at
precisely 12 o’clock, so that ship captains can check that
their timepieces are correct. Since April 2013, the Signal Hill
Noon Gun has had a Twitter account, too. It tweets a single
message simply reading, ‘BANG!’ every day at noon.
BEACH LIFE
Cape Town is surrounded by beautiful
beaches. One of the best sandcastling spots is Muizenberg,
on the sheltered False Bay side of the city. A row of Victorian
beach huts stands on stilts beside the water, painted in primary
colours. The sea is sunkissed and calm here, but swimmers need
to be vigilant – great white sharks like the warm waters, too.
Muizenberg beach was the first to start an official Shark Spotter
programme. Lookouts stationed halfway up the mountain raise
an alarm if a shark drifts too close to the shore.
LITTLE BO-KAAP
Cape Town is a colourful city in every sense, but the brightest ’burb is
Bo-Kaap. The historic area underneath Signal Hill, has long been the
historical centre of Cape Town’s Cape Muslim culture, and was once
known as the Malay Quarter. Its cobbled streets are lined with homes in
all sorts of fantastic shades of pink, blue, green and orange.
DISTRICT SIX
Another vividly painted part of Cape
Town is District Six – an area with a
dark past under South Africa’s old
Apartheid system, where different
coloured communities were forced to
live separately and black people were
discriminated against. Now street art
celebrates the reborn rainbow nation’s
achievements and heroes, including
the man who did the most to topple
Apartheid – Nelson Mandela.