· 3 minute read
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.
By Angie Bradley, Lead guide, Cape Town and the Winelands
Everyone assumes December and January. They are the two months I would pick last.
The Cape runs a Mediterranean climate on a southern-hemisphere calendar: dry summers, wet winters, and a British or American winter that lands in the middle of our high season. That much people know. What they tend not to know is that our peak summer is also our windiest period by a distance, and that the shoulder months either side of it are better in almost every respect.
October and November
The best months here, and the ones I would pick given a free choice. Wildflowers still out across the peninsula, the south-easter not yet at full strength, long evenings, and southern right whales still in Walker Bay until the end of November. Fewer people and lower rates than December.
December and January
High summer and high season. The fortnight around Christmas and New Year is the busiest of the year, because South Africans take their own holidays then: the coast road fills, restaurants need booking weeks out, and the beaches are genuinely crowded.
It is also windy. The south-easter blows for days at a time in January, shuts the cableway, cancels boats and fishing charters, and makes Clifton unusable while leaving Llandudno perfect. It is not a reason not to come. It is a reason to be here with somebody who knows which side of the mountain to be on.
February and March
My quiet favourite. The wind eases through February, the sea is at its warmest, the harvest is on in the valleys and the Christmas crowds have gone home. If you can travel outside school holidays, this is the window I would aim for.
April and May
Autumn, and the prettiest the Winelands get all year. The vines turn, the light goes long and low, the first rain arrives and the mountains green up. Cooler, much quieter, and the shark cage diving off Gansbaai starts coming into its best season as the water clears.
June to August
Winter. Wet, green and mild rather than cold, with daytime temperatures around sixteen to eighteen degrees and storms rolling through in bands of two or three days with clear weather in between.
Considerably better than its reputation. Empty tasting rooms with fires lit, dramatic weather on the peninsula, the whales arriving in Walker Bay from June, and the clearest water of the year for the shark boats. The wrong season for beaches and the right one for almost everything else. It is also when the city is cheapest and least crowded.
September
Wildflowers, the whale season building towards its peak, and the first properly warm days. An excellent month that not enough people use.
Whale season, July to November
Southern rights come into Walker Bay to calve, peaking in September and October, largely gone by early December. If the whales matter to you they set your dates and everything else works around them.
School holidays
The British October half-term and the Easter fortnight both fall in excellent Cape months and both want booking a long way ahead. The American summer holiday, June to August, lands in our winter, which is a perfectly good time to come as long as nobody is expecting to swim.
