Scenic
Table Mountain
The flat top of the city, by cable car or on foot.
Two to three hours by cable car, half a day on foot
Western Cape
Cape Town
A working city wedged between a mountain and two oceans.
Almost every trip we run starts here, and most guests wish they had given it a day more. Cape Town is a city with weather, and the whole art of four good days is reading it one day ahead.
There is a version of Cape Town you can piece together from a hire car and a phone, and a much better one that comes from knowing which day to do what.
Table Mountain makes its own cloud. The south-easter that clears the summit in January is the same wind that shuts the cableway by eleven, and the still blue morning that looks perfect from a hotel window is often the morning the queue runs to ninety minutes. Your guide watches the forecast for the week and moves the mountain to the day it will work. That single decision is worth more than anything else we do for you in this city.
What a Cape Town stay is built around
The peninsula day is the backbone, and it has a page of its own. Beyond it, the city is far more interesting than its postcard. Bo-Kaap above the centre, with its painted houses and Cape Malay cooking. The District Six Museum, an hour that reframes everything you see for the rest of the week. Kirstenbosch on the mountain's eastern flank, where the fynbos is labelled and the lawns make the best picnic in the country.
Then the water. Seal Island out of Hout Bay, a sunset cruise down the Atlantic seaboard, a fishing charter out of either side of the peninsula. Cape Town is a port and it is worth getting off the land at least once.
How long
Four nights is the shortest stay that survives a bad-weather day. Five is comfortable. Seven lets you add the Winelands and the Whale Coast without either of them feeling like a transfer.
Eating
Cape Town eats extremely well and does not much care about formality. We book around what you actually want: a long table at a wine farm in Constantia, a harbour lunch at Kalk Bay as the boats come in, or the tasting menus people fly here for. Tell us on the enquiry form what you eat and what you will not, and it is arranged before you land.
The practical detail
- How long to stay
- 4 to 6 nights
- Best months
- October, November, December, January, February, March, April
- Getting there
- Direct overnight from London Heathrow, eleven hours and forty minutes, landing mid-morning with no time difference in the British summer and one hour in winter. From the United States, connect through Johannesburg, Doha or Addis Ababa. Your guide meets you inside the terminal at arrivals, and the drive into the city takes about forty minutes.
Local knowledge
Things worth doing here
Scenic
Helicopter flights
Twenty minutes over the peninsula, or a valley-to-valley transfer.
Twenty minutes to an hour, plus briefing
Scenic
Boat trips and sunset cruises
Seal Island out of Hout Bay, or a glass of something off Clifton.
Forty minutes to three hours, depending on the boat
Scenic
Cape Point
A lighthouse on a cliff at the end of the peninsula.
Half a day, or a full day combined with the penguins
Adventure
Fishing charters
Yellowtail and tuna out of Hout Bay, or calmer water in False Bay.
Half day from four hours, full day from eight
Adventure
Horse riding on Noordhoek beach
Eight kilometres of empty sand, and nothing else on it.
Two hours, or a half day with the wine estate ride
Wildlife
The penguins at Boulders
Two thousand African penguins on a suburban beach.
An hour and a half, usually part of a peninsula day
Food and wine
Wine tasting in the Cape
Three estates, one long lunch, and a guide who drives.
A full day, or a half day from Cape Town
Adventure
Zip lining in the Overberg
Thirteen slides through an indigenous forest gorge above Elgin.
Half a day, about three hours on the cables plus the drive
Itineraries that include it
4 days · 3 nights
Four Days in Cape Town
The city, the mountain and the peninsula, with a spare day for the weather.
7 days · 6 nights
The Classic Cape Week
The city, the peninsula, the Winelands and the whale coast, in one region.
8 days · 7 nights
A Family Week in the Cape
Penguins, a canopy tour, a boat and a beach, with the driving kept short.
7 days · 6 nights
A Cape Honeymoon
Seven days, two people, and a guide who knows when to disappear.
10 days · 9 nights
Ten Days in the Cape
The unhurried version, with time on the water and two nights on the coast.
More about this region
Often combined with
The Cape Peninsula
Forty miles of mountain and ocean, ending at a lighthouse.
0 to 2 nights
The Cape Winelands
Three hundred years of vines, an hour from the airport.
2 to 3 nights
The Whale Coast and Overberg
Whales below the cliff path, and a forest gorge on the way there.
1 to 3 nights
Worth reading
Safety ·
Is Cape Town safe for a family holiday? An honest answer.
It comes up in about half the enquiries we get, usually apologetically. Here is what the risk actually consists of in this city, what changes it, and what we think is genuinely worth planning around.
Planning ·
When to visit Cape Town, month by month
High summer is not the best month here, and winter is a great deal better than its reputation. A month-by-month guide to the Cape, with the trade-offs stated plainly.
Planning ·
The peninsula day, in the right order
Almost every visitor drives the Cape Peninsula the same way round, at the same time, and meets every coach in the Western Cape at Cape Point. There is no reason to, and the day is transformed by running it backwards.
Build a trip around this
Tell us where you are drawn and how long you have, and we will tell you straight what fits and what does not. Six questions, about three minutes.
We reply to every enquiry within one working day.