A trip to Cape Town wouldn’t be complete without a drive down the Cape Peninsula, where you’ll see the most amazing views and a colony of very cute African penguins. Here’s how I spent a day road-tripping the Cape Peninsula.
Clifton, Camps Bay & the Twelve Apostles
My friend and I picked up our hire car in central Cape Town and didn’t find it too difficult to get out of the city and onto the Cape Peninsula coast road. First, you pass the Clifton beaches and then Camps Bay. We’d already visited the latter in a cab one evening from our hotel in Cape Town to eat at Codfather, a great fish restaurant that’s well worth the journey. This time we stopped off to take a look at the beach and the stunning Twelve Apostles range, which are part of Table Mountain.
Hout Bay & Chapman’s Peak Drive
Next, the road snakes around to Hout Bay for more amazing views and the start of Chapman’s Peak Drive. You need to pay a toll to drive along this section of the Cape Peninsula, but it’s well worth it. The winding road has picnic spots and viewpoints and is regarded as one of the most spectacular stretches of coastal highway in the world. And we found it a lot easier to drive along than the Amalfi Coast in Italy! Chapman’s Peak Drive ends at the magnificent Noordhoek Beach, where you can take one last look at the Atlantic Ocean before turning inland to cross over to the False Bay side of the Cape Peninsula.
Lunch in Simon’s Town
We turned onto the False Bay coast at Glencairn Beach and then drove down to Simon’s Town, a historic naval base. The town was named after the 17th-century governor of the Cape and was the winter home of the Dutch East India Company before becoming a British naval base in the early 19th century. Nowadays, it’s a South African Navy HQ, so there are still plenty of people in uniforms walking around the town. It’s an attractive place to explore, with some interesting colonial buildings and a pretty harbour where we had a nice lunch at Bertha’s.
Boulders Penguin Colony
Just outside Simon’s Town is one of the main attractions of the Cape Peninsula, the Boulders Penguin Colony. Located on a pretty stretch of beach, the colony consists of large boulders separating sandy coves and is home to around 3,000 African penguins. There’s a main boardwalk where you’ll see a few penguins waddling around underneath as you walk down, and then at the end, there are absolutely loads. When we were there, it was mating season, so as well as being very cute, they were very noisy! There’s also another quieter walkway through some trees to a small lookout, where you can look back across the beach.
Cape Point
There’s more to explore if you continue south to the Cape of Good Hope section of the Table Mountain National Park, where there’s fantastic birdwatching and walks. This nature reserve is also known as Cape Point, as its promontory is the southwesternmost point of Africa. We decided against spending the drive and money on the entrance fee as we wouldn’t have had much time to spend there and wanted to try visiting Table Mountain on our way back to the city.
Table Mountain
I say try to visit, because we’d driven via Table Mountain on our way out of Cape Town that morning. When you’re driving in and out of the city to visit the spectacular Cape Peninsula, the iconic mountain is pretty impossible to miss. But once there, we discovered it was impossible to park and the queue for the cableway to the top was very long! On the way back, at around 5pm, we found it was much quieter and easy to park. The cableway was still open, but at the lower station you’re already pretty high up, and we realised we could see a fab view of the city without going to the cableway station at the top!
For more posts about my trip, visit the South Africa section of my blog.