A Tourist Guide to Cape Town, South Africa
If you’ve never been to Cape Town, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s a city that’ll have you in raptures. Along with its exceptional natural beauty, award-winning restaurants, inner-city boutique wineries and foot stomping night clubs, it’s the local people who are the inimitable jewels in the crown.
Located on the southern tip of the African continent, Cape Town is modern, vibey and cosmopolitan. It’s an eclectic blend of old and new, with beautifully preserved examples of Cape Dutch architecture rubbing shoulders with multi-story office blocks that glint and dazzle in the bright African sun.
Wild Animal Encounters
It’s one of the few urban metropoles that has a national park running down its spine. On a good day, when the sun is just starting to peep above the horizon, you can encounter caracal, porcupine, mongoose, and the occasional lovelorn baboon as you enjoy an early morning jog on the myriad trails that criss-cross the lower slopes of Table Mountain.
If you know how, when and where, you can unlock an endless array of indoor and outdoor entertainment in and around the ‘Mother City’. Exploring Cape Town is like redeeming a slew of Fair Go Casino codes… there’s always a bonus or surprise lying in wait just around the next corner.
Despite its wild side, Cape Town is a sophisticated city with modern infrastructure, lavish hotels, and guest houses and all the support services a tourist could possibly wish for. Throw in an advantageous exchange rate and it’s no wonder the city is rated as one of the most diverse and exciting vacation destinations on Earth.
What can you expect to find on the fairest Cape in all the world?
Spectacular Beaches
The city lies at the confluence of two great oceans – the icy Atlantic and more balmy Indian. As a result, there’s an endless expanse of coastline featuring sheltered bays, craggy promontories, sheer cliffs, and soft, white sandy beaches… all within a hop, skip and jump of the city centre and suburban neighbourhoods.
Some of the best beaches are located minutes away from the CBD and include the four trendy beaches of Clifton where the young, beautiful and well ribbed strut their stuff; Llandudno, a family beach and surfer’s paradise and Camps Bay where you can exchange your beach bats for an ice-cold cocktail in the blink of an eye.
A little further afield along the False Bay coastline are the warm water beaches and bathing pools – Muizenberg with its child-friendly pavilion and water slide, St James and its kaleidoscope coloured Victorian bathing boxes and natural paddling pool and Boulders Beach where endangered African penguins are among your BFFs.
World-class Restaurants
Aside from providing safe places to swim and suntan, the Cape coastline is a limitless source of the tastiest seafood in the world. Crayfish, mussels, oysters and line fish, fresh from the sea, are standard fare at any number of star-rated restaurants.
If game, poultry, red meat, vegetarian or vegan is your dining preference, you are equally well catered for at upscale eateries featuring Michelin stars, convivial pubs with a distinctly country feel and pop-up restaurants and bistros that serve haute cuisine with an adventurous twist.
Superb Accommodation
Cape Town is home to gracious old hotels that speak of its colonial past; mega-modern facilities plastered with the Hilton, Marriott, Radisson, and Sun International branding and exclusive boutique hotels, some quirky but all exceptional and exquisite.
There’s a wide choice of guest houses, bed & breakfasts and self-catering units suitable for all budgets but if you want to live like a local, there are affordable Airbnb’s and backpackers in just about every neighbourhood.
Hop-on and Hop-off City Tours
One of the best ways to appreciate the myriad delights of Cape Town is on a guided city or Peninsula tour on the bright red open-top bus. You can hop on and hop off at key attractions and enjoy the city and surrounds at your leisure.
There’s a range of low-cost city sightseeing packages to pick and choose from, many of which have walking tours and harbour or canal cruises included in the rate.
Ocean Cruises
If you’re more of a pirate than a landlubber, there are scheduled cruises departing from nearly all the harbours. You can watch Great White sharks breach out of the water as they hunt seals off Hout Bay, sip sundowners off Clifton beach and visit the infamous Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for 27 years.
You can go big game fishing from Kalk Bay and Simonstown harbours and hire a catamaran or luxury yacht for your own private party. There’s even a replica pirate ship with pitch black sails that’ll enchant the little ones for hours and hours as you do what only big people do!
Divine Day Trips
Once you’ve fully immersed yourself in the city, it’s time to explore the surrounding areas. Prime destinations include the fabled Cape Winelands with its endless selection of wineries; the coastal town of Hermanus, where you can watch Southern Right, Humpback and Bryde’s whales from the land and the tiny fishing village of Paternoster with its large and accessible gannet colony.
Plan your trip to Cape Town in late August or early September and you’ll have the added bonus of being able to view the thick carpets of spring flowers that burst out along the arid West Coast.
