Cape Town
A working city wedged between a mountain and two oceans.
4 to 6 nights
Table Mountain
The flat top of the city, by cable car or on foot.
A three-minute rotating cable car to a plateau a kilometre above the sea, or a two-hour climb up Platteklip Gorge if you would rather earn it. The trick is going on the right day, not the first day.
Everyone books Table Mountain for their first morning. It is the most common way to waste a day in Cape Town.
The mountain is a flat-topped sandstone massif standing directly behind the city, and it generates its own weather. The south-easterly that makes Cape Town summers bearable pours over the top and forms the cloud people call the tablecloth, and when it blows hard the cableway stops, sometimes for a day, sometimes for three. In winter the problem is inversion cloud, which sits on the plateau and reduces the summit to a white room.
So we do not book it in advance. We watch it. Your guide has the week's forecast and the cableway's own wind readings, and takes you up on the morning that will work, which might be your second day or your fifth.
Up there
The summit plateau is bigger than people expect: three kilometres of level rock and fynbos with laid paths, a café, and dassies that stopped caring about humans long ago. The Atlantic side looks down on Camps Bay and out to the horizon. The city side has the whole bowl, the harbour and Robben Island below you. Give it ninety minutes at least.
On foot
Platteklip Gorge goes straight up the front of the mountain: two hours, no technical difficulty, and unremitting. India Venster on the cable station side is more interesting and involves scrambling with exposure, and we run it with a mountain guide for people who genuinely want it. Both are much better at seven in the morning than at eleven.
The practical detail
- How long it takes
- Two to three hours by cable car, half a day on foot
- When it works best
- All year. The cableway closes in high wind, most common between November and February, and in low cloud, most common in winter.
- Who it suits
- No minimum age. Easy physically. Suitable for families. The cable car and the summit paths suit any age, and there is a level circular route at the top that takes a pushchair. Platteklip is a steep, relentless staircase of a climb and not one for a child under twelve.
Good to know
Where it happens
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.
Worth reading
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.
Tell us this one matters
Some of these set the shape of a whole trip. Say which ones you care about on the enquiry form and we will build outwards from them.
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