Cape Town
A working city wedged between a mountain and two oceans.
4 to 6 nights
7 days · 6 nights
The Classic Cape Week
The itinerary we run most often. Everything on it sits within two hours of everything else, you unpack twice, and there is a whole day in the middle with nothing scheduled on it at all.
- Length
- 7 days · 6 nights
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Suited to
- couples, families, first-time visitors
- When to go
- Excellent from September to May. In whale season, July to November, the night on the coast is the one guests most often extend to two.
Everything on this itinerary is within two hours of everything else. That is the whole design.
A week is not long enough to add a safari to, and trying ruins both halves. Two nights in a reserve costs two internal flights and roughly a day and a half of the week in transit, for four game drives. Most people who do it come home wishing they had done one thing properly instead of two things at a run.
So this week stays in the Cape. You unpack twice, the driving is never more than ninety minutes, and there is a fourth day in the middle with nothing on it.
If you are going on to a safari
Plenty of our guests are, and we build for it. We run the Cape leg, hand you over cleanly at the airport with the internal flight already booked, and pick you up again if you come back through. We do not operate in the Lowveld or the Eastern Cape and we will not pretend otherwise, but we know who does and we will say so.
The route
Day by day
Day 1
Landing
Your guide meets you at arrivals and drives you to the hotel. Nothing is scheduled. Dinner is booked walkably close and early enough that an overnight flight does not have to be survived.
- Where you stay
- Boutique hotel, City Bowl
- Meals included
- Dinner
Day 2
The peninsula, run backwards
Eight hours down the peninsula and back, run clockwise so that you are at Boulders before the coaches and at Cape Point while it is still quiet. Lunch at a harbour, and Chapman's Peak on the way home with the light where you want it. It is the day most guests photograph most, and on a short trip we put it early in case the weather turns later in the week.
- Where you stay
- Boutique hotel, City Bowl
- Meals included
- Breakfast, Lunch
- What you might do
Day 3
City and mountain
A morning in the city, which is far more interesting than its postcard: the painted streets of Bo-Kaap, and the District Six Museum, an hour that reframes everything you see for the rest of the week. Kirstenbosch in the afternoon, and the cableway slotted into whichever half of the day the wind permits.
- Where you stay
- Boutique hotel, City Bowl
- Meals included
- Breakfast
- What you might do
Day 4
An open day
A helicopter over the peninsula, a boat out to the seal colony at Duiker Island, a fishing charter out of Hout Bay, the Zeitz MOCAA, a beach at Llandudno, or the mountain if it has been shut all week. Your guide and the vehicle are available from breakfast and you are under no obligation to use either.
- Where you stay
- Boutique hotel, City Bowl
- Meals included
- Breakfast
- What you might do
Day 5
A night in the Winelands
Forty-five minutes east. Two tastings before lunch with the cellars walked properly, two hours at a table under oaks, and a night on an estate rather than in a town. Your guide drives and does not taste, which is the entire reason to do it this way.
- Where you stay
- Wine estate, Stellenbosch
- Meals included
- Breakfast, Lunch
- What you might do
Day 6
Over the pass to the coast
Over Sir Lowry's Pass into the Elgin valley, and a morning on the canopy tour if the party wants it: thirteen zip lines down a forested gorge with a waterfall running under the middle of it. Lunch in the valley, then down to Hermanus and the cliff path in the last of the light. In season the southern rights are in Walker Bay directly below you.
- Where you stay
- Small coastal hotel, Hermanus
- Meals included
- Breakfast, Dinner
- What you might do
Day 7
Back along the coast, and home
Rather than retracing the inland route we come back on the R44, which runs between the mountains and the sea along the edge of False Bay for most of the way and is one of the finest drives in the country. Ninety minutes to the airport with a stop at Betty's Bay, where there is a second penguin colony that almost nobody bothers with.
- Meals included
- Breakfast
What is included
What is included
- A registered guide with you for all seven days
- Private vehicle and all ground transport, airport to airport
- All accommodation, chosen and booked by us
- Daily breakfast plus the meals marked on each day
- Park fees, reserve entry and conservation levies
- Restaurant bookings and cellar visits arranged in advance
- A number that reaches one of us at any hour, with your itinerary in front of them
What is not
- International flights and visas
- Travel insurance, which we ask every guest to carry
- Meals not marked on the itinerary
- Drinks, gratuities and anything of a personal nature
- Optional extras such as helicopter flights, boat trips, charters and the canopy tour
We publish no figures on this website, because the same fortnight varies enormously with the properties, the season and the size of the party. You get one total covering everything listed above, before anything becomes payable.
Guests who travelled on this itinerary
We were nervous about Cape Town and we said so in the enquiry form. Rather than telling us we were being silly, they answered it properly: where we would be, why those areas, what the guide does and does not do, and what happens if something goes wrong. That reply was the reason we booked. The whales at Hermanus were the highlight for our teenagers, which none of us predicted. We had it in the itinerary as a stopover and ended up wishing we had given it two nights.
Kate and Tom S.
Edinburgh ·
7 days · Cape Town, the peninsula, the Winelands and Hermanus
Placeholder testimonial. Replace with a real guest review before launch.
A very well-run week and I would use them again. My only reservation is that our Winelands night was on an estate a fair way out of Stellenbosch, and having said we liked walking to dinner we then could not. That was a mismatch between what we asked for and what was booked, and to be fair it was fixed for the second night within an hour of my mentioning it. Everything else was faultless. The cliff path at Hermanus at seven in the morning, with the whales below us and nobody else there, was worth the entire trip.
Fiona A.
Gloucestershire ·
7 days · the peninsula, Stellenbosch and Hermanus
Placeholder testimonial. Replace with a real guest review before launch.
Where this trip goes
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
What you might do
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
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
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
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
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
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
Adventure
Shark cage diving
Gansbaai, a surface cage, and no diving qualification needed.
A morning, roughly five hours on the water and back
Worth reading first
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.
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.
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.
Use this as a starting point
Almost every trip we run began as one of these and ended up somewhere else. Tell us roughly what you have in mind and we will redraw it around you. Six questions, about three minutes.
We reply to every enquiry within one working day.