Cape Town

Cape Town is the postcard you've seen and the city behind it. The mountain rises a vertical kilometre straight from the centre, two strands of beach run south along the Atlantic, the Cape Winelands start twenty minutes inland, and on the other side of Devil's Peak the Cape Flats hold most of the city's four-and-a-half million people in townships that mostly don't appear in the photos. The two halves of the trip you take here are essentially independent; how much of each you choose to see is the real itinerary decision.

When to go

The southern summer, December through early March, is the best and worst time to come: reliably warm and dry (Cape Town gets its rain in winter) and at its most photogenic, but also peak South African holiday season, when prices double and the best tables book a fortnight ahead. Late March to May is the smarter window. The Winelands are in harvest, the sea is still swimmable, and an apartment that runs R3,000 a night in January drops closer to R1,500. Winter, June to August, is genuinely wet and cold by local standards, around 17°C with rain most days. One year-round warning: the Cape Doctor, the south-easterly that funnels through in summer, can close the Table Mountain cableway entirely on its worst days, so check the website before banking on the mountain.

What it's actually like

Cape Town changes register every few kilometres. The Atlantic Seaboard is the postcard: sunset cocktails, a three-kilometre promenade at golden hour, a flat-white café culture that would pass in Melbourne, and the V&A Waterfront with its working harbour and the Robben Island ferry from the Nelson Mandela Gateway. The City Bowl behind it is older and denser: Bo-Kaap's painted houses on the lower slopes of Signal Hill, the District Six Museum where the apartheid forced-removal story is told by the people whose families were moved, the restaurant strip on Bree and Kloof Streets. Twenty minutes inland the Winelands open out around Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, tasting menus that would carry stars and twice the price in Europe. And on the other side of the mountain are the Cape Flats, where most of the city actually lives and where the postcard stops; reputable township walking tours leave from the V&A, and doing one with a local guide is the basic etiquette.

The neighbourhood you want

Sea Point. The promenade is on your doorstep, the bus into town runs every few minutes during the day, and an apartment with an Atlantic view costs roughly half what Camps Bay commands for the same outlook. Camps Bay is striking but a one-strip town where you'll Uber for everything. Green Point sits between, with the V&A a flat walk away, and is the practical default if you want short walks to the ferries and harbour restaurants. Avoid central-city stays after dark in favour of any of the above.

Don't miss

Cape Point, two hours south, reached through Hout Bay and over Chapman's Peak Drive (R65 toll, worth it) along some of the most dramatic coastal road in Africa. The reserve at the end has a funicular to the old lighthouse, a footpath down to the new one, and baboons that will rob you of a sandwich without hesitation. Ignore the tour-bus line about two oceans meeting here (that happens at Cape Agulhas, 200km south-east); the draw is the wind-scoured south-westerly tip of the continent, cold off the Atlantic even in February. Stop at the Boulders Beach penguin colony in Simon's Town on the way back, then Kalk Bay for fish and chips on the harbour wall.

Kirstenbosch, on the eastern slope of Table Mountain, is the other half-day worth carving out: an indigenous botanical garden of fynbos and forest, with the Boomslang, a curving steel walkway, threaded through the treetops. From late November to April the Sunday-evening concerts on the lawn are how locals use the place; bring a picnic and arrive early for a spot.