Cape Town
A city where the weather writes the schedule — you climb Table Mountain on the clear morning, not the planned one
- When to go
- September 14° · 8 rainy days
- Per day
- €€€price 3 of 5
- How many days
- 5days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 18 km Cape Town
- Right now
Cape Town is planned by weather, not by days: the Table Mountain cableway runs only when the wind allows, and the cloud on the summit hides the view even when it does. So each day has a clear-sky version and a windy one, and you go up the first morning the mountain shows itself.
The cloud over the top is called the tablecloth: the south-easter pushes moist air up the slope, where it condenses. The cableway posts its operating status on its website, so in the morning you check that first and choose the day second. An adult return is €25 online and €28 at the ticket office. An online ticket is valid for seven days and refunded if unused, so you can buy it before the trip without the wind eating it.
The city is spread out. The centre, Bo-Kaap and the V&A Waterfront are walkable, and MyCiTi routes 106 and 107 run from the Waterfront to Camps Bay. Cape Point and the winelands need a car, and the MyCiTi airport route has not run since December 2022, so from the airport you take a car or a ride app. You drive on the left; in car parks, men in vests watch your car for small change, which is normal here, not a scam.
After dark you do not walk around the centre, and that is the British Foreign Office's advice, not only the locals'. From Long Street, from Woodstock and from dinner in De Waterkant you come back by cab or app, so the last item of the day is planned with transport rather than a map.
Guides for Cape Town
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
Cape Town in 5 days
→Five days of which one is deliberately empty — because you climb Table Mountain on the clear morning, not the planned…
Day trips from Cape Town
→Six day trips from Cape Town, ordered by driving time — and two that depend on the month rather than the weather.
Where to stay in Cape Town
→The centre, De Waterkant, Sea Point, Camps Bay or Kalk Bay — five districts that change your evenings, not your days.
What Cape Town costs
→Cape Town is cheap to eat in and dear to get into — Cape Point and Boulders on the same day cost more than lunch and…
What to see in Cape Town
Table Mountain
A flat top whose highest point is 1,086 metres; the cableway car turns a full circle on the way up, so everyone gets the whole view. The Platteklip Gorge path takes two to three hours almost straight up with no shade — in summer, start early.
Bo-Kaap
A quarter under Signal Hill, built from the 1760s as rental houses and home to slaves and craftsmen from Southeast Asia and Africa — hence its old name, the Malay Quarter. The bright façades date from the late twentieth century, younger than the story told about them. People live here: photograph from the street, and stay out of the yards.
Robben Island
The prison where Mandela spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years, now a museum. The visit takes three and a half hours including the boat, and a former political prisoner leads you through the prison — that is the reason to go. Boats leave the Waterfront at 9, 11, 13 and 15, only when the sea allows, so book ahead.
Cape Point and Boulders
A day driving down the peninsula: Chapman's Peak, the penguins at Boulders Beach, the lighthouse at Cape Point, back through Simon's Town. Cape Point and Boulders each charge their own entry — €27 and €13 for a foreign visitor, cards only. The car-park baboons open unlocked doors and help themselves to the food inside.
- K
Kirstenbosch
A botanical garden at the eastern foot of Table Mountain, founded in 1913 as the first in the world devoted solely to its own country's native flora. The Boomslang canopy walkway is 130 metres long and climbs to 12 metres above the ground; from late November to late March there are Sunday evening concerts on the lawns.
Woodstock and the Old Biscuit Mill
A former industrial quarter of murals and galleries, with the Neighbourgoods market in an old biscuit factory on Saturdays and Sundays until the afternoon. Weekdays are quiet here, and after dark you leave by car.
Two things you probably did not know
Table Mountain is around six hundred million years old, older than the Himalayas, the Alps and the Rockies put together. Over thirteen hundred plant species grow on it, more than in the whole of Britain.
In 2018 Cape Town was months away from the day its water would run out. Use was capped at fifty litres per person a day, the city halved its consumption, and that day never came.
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Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Cape Town — day trips or weekends.
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Within reach from here: Fish River Canyon, Sossusvlei and Johannesburg
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