Three ways to experience Cape Town

by Dominic Chadbon, 6 December 2007

Cape Town has many faces: it's a bustling, vibey city for sure, but it also boasts some of the most picturesque scenery in the world with fabulous nature areas. What makes this all the more remarkable is the ease with which all this can be accessed - you don't need to arrange tours and engage guides: hire a car or put on your walking shoes and set off to turn a sightseeing holiday into an adventure of your own.

Urban Safari

'It's a jungle out there!' breathed my companion as we ease our way into the cool recesses of a bar on Long Street - the centre of Cape Town's nervous system. We've just finished a long walk through a city long mocked for its provincialism and laid-back attitude but now an internationally famed hotspot.

No longer the private preserve of whites and coloureds, Cape Town now rings with shouts in Xhosa, Swahili or French, while Brazilian backpackers mingle with Japanese language students. Take a walk downtown - avoid the train station area and it's as safe as any big city - and absorb the new multiculturalism of the Mother City.

The best place to start is St Georges Mall - a central pedestrian precinct packed with traders and buskers. Give the tourist-trap of Greenmarket Square a miss and head for nearby Church Street with its more genuine African artefacts.

Running across the top of Church is Long Street: the mood here is young and hip, where loud bars rub shoulders with antique book shops and delis. For a curt reminder about how far Cape Town has come, walk across town to the District Six Museum (25A Buitenkant St) and experience the horror of the forced removals and segregation of another age.

Walk on the Wild Side

Capetonians love to complain about rising prices, increasingly congested roads and non-stop property development ... so why do they all still live here? The answer is found when perched on a boulder high up on a flower-specked mountain slope with jaw-dropping views of two oceans and a pair of soaring black eagles for company.

The Table Mountain National Park extends the length of the Cape Peninsula, and it's a treasure trove of protected beauty. To experience Table Mountain without the crowds you can explore it via the meandering back route from Constantia Nek, or push your fitness levels with a hike up the mountain by way of Platteklip Gorge or Nursery Ravine.

Cape Point itself offers a network of walking trails with the often unexpected bonus of a chance meeting with large antelope like eland or bontebok. Most tourist information offices stock the excellent series of trailmaps by Peter Slingsby so you'll have to really try hard to get lost. Just remember to hike in a small group and be prepared for sudden changes in the weather.

The Peninsula's best-kept secret is however at Silvermine Nature Reserve where well-marked paths snake through pristine fynbos - the unique floral kingdom that makes the Cape a red-hot destination for nature lovers. Prepare to be blown away by the year-round riot of colour provided by the showy proteas and heathers, the emerald glint or orange flash of sunbirds and LSD-inspired colours of the basking lizards.

The trail pushes up a mountain, cuts through stands of aromatic bush and swings past caves and waterfalls - enough to mesmerise even the most reluctant walker. For those less energetic or weighed down by kids, head for the dam where you can swim and picnic.

The truly industrious can saddle up and hit the torturous mountain bike routes that see-saw through the reserve.

Hit the Road

The trumpeting hyperbole of the tourist brochures notwithstanding, Cape Town really is located in the most amazing setting. It's view after view, a montage of mountains and ocean and, provided you are prepared to do a bit of driving, it's all free.

Buckle up and take a lazy drive out from the city on the coast-hugging Victoria Road and due south towards Hout Bay. The garish villas of the rich and slightly famous at Camps Bay and Clifton soon give way to stunning views of an azure Atlantic Ocean and wild, rocky coast.

The famous Chapman's Peak Drive from Hout Bay to the sweeping beach of Noordhoek will leave you grasping for adjectives. Make your way round the peninsula, stopping in at Cape Point, and then back to the city via the picturesque villages of Simonstown and Kalk Bay where you may even spot a whale. Pause at Boulders Beach and you'll definitely see penguins.

It's just as good out of town as well: motor along the False Bay coast on Baden-Powell Drive and the N2, breeze through Gordon's Bay and find yourself on the ridiculously scenic Claren's Drive on the way to Hermanus.

This is a great area to do a bit of back road exploring in the rolling farmland of the Overberg, studded with sleepy villages and verdant vineyards. Come back to Cape Town via the N2 and stop off at the top of Sir Lowry's Pass for a last view over the entire Peninsula and its encompassing mountain ranges.

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