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Cape Town Cont 1. - Western Province |  |
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Exploring the Peninsula As the crow flies, it's about 60 kilometres from central Cape Town to Cape Point in the far south. Rugged and for the most part quite beautiful mountains run down the Peninsula to form its 'spine', but there are good roads to either side and over the inland passes. The western shoreline is wild, rocky, scenically spectacular; the eastern one - that fringing False Bay - gentler in aspect and more heavily populated.
Apart from the city itself, these are the oldest part of metropolitan Cape Town: they began life as farmsteads in the later 1650s, and the old connecting routes have been retained, though of course they're now quite unrecognisable - Main Road and the suburban railway run through heavily built-up terrain, linking 'villages' between which there is very little if any open space. Prominent among the suburban centres and their attractions are, from north to south: Rhodes Estate (also known as Groot Schuur Estate), which straddles or overlooks the suburbs of Mowbray, Rosebank and Rondebosch, comprises property once owned by the financier, politician and eccentric visionary Cecil John Rhodes. Here you'll find the ivy-covered buildings of the university of Cape Town, the elegant Cape Dutch mansion known as Groot Schuur ('Great Barn', which it originally was) and Groot Schuur hospital, where Dr Christiaan Barrnard and his cardiac team first transplanted a human heart (in 1967). Perhaps its most striking feature, though, is Rhodes Memorial, a kind of classical 'temple' on the slopes of Devil's Peak honouring a man who, though he had his faults, exerted an enormous influence on the course of Southern African events during the 19th century. The memorial is especially noted for its fine equestrian statue (named 'Physical Energy'); Rudyard Kipling's tribute - to 'the immense and brooding spirit' who 'still shall quicken and control. Living he was the land, and dead, his soul shall be her soul' - is inscribed on a bust of this dedicated Imperialist. There's a pleasant tea-garden on site; the view across the Cape Flats to the distant hills invites one to linger. Newlands One of Cape Town's leafier residential areas, famed for its cricket and rugby grounds (the latter has a fascinating rugby museum, the world's most extensive, attached to it), and popular among the locals for its quiet, deep-green pine forest. Its main attraction for visitors, though, is the: Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, which sprawls up Table Mountain's eastern slopes and holds, within its relatively small cultivated area, some 6000 different species of South African plant. Claremont Still affectionately known as 'The Village' (a reference to its once separate status) but now one of the country's fastest-growing commercial areas, one that has competed successfully for the upmarket shopper. Cavendish Square and its neighbours are known for the speciality outlets. Wynberg, just south of Claremont; is also heavily commercialised but Wynberg Hill remains green and pleasant and the section known as Little Chelsea merits a visit for its small, bright, immaculate homes.
The scenic route (Victoria Drive) along the Peninsula's west coast starts at the inner seaside suburbs of Green Point and Sea Point, both dense with apartment and timeshare blocks, hotels, eateries and nightspots. Green Point is known for its lighthouse (the country's oldest) and golf course; Sea Point for its rather pleasant, palm-fringed promenade, though vagrancy can be a problem. The drive then passes through Bantry Bay and Clifton, their beaches among the Peninsula's most fashionable, the flanking hillsides crowded with the flats and villas of the affluent. A little further south is Camps Bay, whose warm summer sands entice thousands of sun-worshippers. Victoria Drive then cuts through the coastal mountains - the massive and often mist-wreathed Twelve Apostles (in fact there are 17 of them) - to the picture-postcard village of Llandudno. Pause a moment at the lay-by high above the bay: the view, especially at sunset, is entrancing. Hout Bay A largish harbour and residential town set in one of the loveliest of wooded valleys, overlooked by the Constantia hills on one side and, on the other, by a massif that ends in a striking peak known as the Sentinel. 'Hout' means 'wood' in Afrikaans (and in the Dutch of the first white settlers), a reference to the yellowwood trees that once grew so prolifically on the surrounding slopes - and which were so ruthlessly culled to provide timber for the early colonists. The picturesque harbour is usually crammed - with sleek leisure craft as well as work-worn fishing boats; Mariner's Wharf, a mini-complex named after its bigger San Francisco counterpart, is Highlights for its fresh-fish market (the speciality is rock-lobster, locally known as crayfish) and excellent restaurant. In fact the town and its surrounds are unusually well served by the culinary arts. Other Hout Bay attractions include the World of Birds; and Kronendal, a charming Cape Dutch homestead (built in the year 1800) on the main through-road: it houses an interesting art gallery and, again, a good restaurant. Noordhoek The village, tucked away between mountain and sea, could until recently be reached from Hout Bay via Chapman's Peak Drive, one of the most scenic of the world's coastal routes. You could also make your way inland and round via Constantia Nek and Tokai, but it's probably worth the effort - especially if you're heading to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point and can spare the time for a brief digression. Noordhoek is a quiet, laid-back place of mostly unpretentious homes, of dogs and horses, green pastures and magnificent trees. Its Long Beach is huge, bare, pale gold, pristine, stretching wide and handsome (and rather windblown) southwards for a good ten kilometres. There are some attractive curio-cum-art shops and a good farm-stall in the rather imaginatively designed Noordhoek Farm Village.
The Peninsula comes to a dramatic end in a massive granite headland, part of which - the most accessible part - is known as Cape Point, a magnificent viewsite that is as famed for its legend as its scenic magnificence. It was around the Point that the Flying Dutchman, the ghost ship with its broken spars and tattered sails, is said to have been sighted over the past four centuries (on one occasion by no less that young Prince George, destined to become King of England but at the time a mere Royal Navy midshipman). The story was born, in the 1600s, when Dutch Captain Hendrik van der Decken, his ship battered by one of the notorious Cape storms, vowed to round the Cape even if it took him until the end of time to do so - and Providence accepted the challenge. The Cape is said to mark the precise point of division between the Atlantic and Indian oceans, and indeed this seems logical enough when you compare the sea and the coasts running away on either side. In the west the shoreline is more rugged, and the waters much colder, than those on the False Bay side. But in reality the oceans merge much further to the east, off Cape Agulhas, Africa's southernmost extremity. For the best views you either climb up or, if you don't have the energy, take the funicula to the base of the old lighthouse, from where the cliffs plunge down almost sheer to the blue sea far, far below. Near the lower funicula station and parking area there's a shop and a pleasant restaurant. Here and elsewhere in the general area you may find yourself in the company of a troop of baboons belonging to the chacma, or savanna, species. Please don't feed them: they are already familiar with and nonchalant about the human presence, have become fond of handouts and, some of them, not shy of stealing from your car. Those that are encouraged may become too much of a nuisance and will have to be put down. Cape Point and the land to the north is a protected area, part of the wider Cape Peninsula National Park.
The bay, so named because early navigators often mistook Cape Point for Hangklip to the north (an error which accounted for many a shipwreck), runs in a wide sweep from the Cape of Good Hope to Somerset West and the distant Hottentots Holland mountains, and is fringed by an almost continuous stretch of gentle beach and, at its southern end, by a scatter of seaside towns linked by a coastal road and railway line. The waters of the bay are warm, blue, often windy, and much favoured by yachtsmen, anglers, watersports enthusiasts, bathers and sun-worshippers. Simon's Town It served as the Royal Navy's principal South Atlantic base for more than a century (1810 to 1957) and is now the headquarters of the South African Navy. Much of the charming town's past has been preserved; Highlights are the Simon's Town, the South Africa Naval, the Stempastorie (the old Dutch reformed pasonage), and the Warrior Toy museums. The first-mentioned started life as the Cape Dutch governor's country house and is notable for its slave quarters (and for its ghost). In Jubilee Square you'll find the statue of a dog called Just Nuisance - a Great Dane who befriended and was much loved by the British sailors stationed here during the second world war (in fact the animal was formally attested into the Royal Navy with the rank of able seaman, and when he died was buried with full military honours). Fish Hoek Kalk Bay, Muizenberg Highlights are Natale Labia museum and the modest, thatched cottage in which Cecil Rhodes lived and died (in 1902). Constantia An exclusive area of affluent homes, beautifully wooded parkland, valley and hill on the northern uplands of the Table Mountain range and site of three stately Cape Dutch mansions that, together, comprise the Peninsula's 'wine route' Groot Constantia is the oldest, best known and the most stylish of the three homesteads, originally built by the Cape Colonial Governor Simon van der Stel, who lived there until his death in 1712. A little over half a century later the estate was taken over by the master vintner Hendrik Cloete, who enlarged and beautified the house and began producing wines that were praised by poets and bought by the rich and famous of Europe. Fire destroyed much of the place in the 1920s, but it's been meticulously restored to serve as a major tourist attraction. The house itself, single storied, thatched, grandly gabled, conforms to the classic Cape Dutch 'U' plan; inside you'll find period furniture, tapestries, paintings and some fine pieces of porcelain. The cellar is notable for its cherub-adorned pediment ( the work of the sculptor Anton Anreith); the next-door museum tells the story of wine through the ages. Elsewhere in the grounds is the Jonkershuis, the home traditionally built for the eldest son of the family, and an oak-lined avenue leading to an ornamental pool where the local aristocracy once relaxed (and where Van der Stel's ghost, it's said, makes its amiable appearance). Today, the tree-shaded lawns host picnicking day-visitors. Groot Constantia has two excellent restaurants. There are daily tours, wine tastings, and sales. Klein Constantia A smaller Cape Dutch homestead, and rather younger (started life in 1786, and later slipped into grievous disrepair), beautifully restored by private initiative. Wine tastings are laid on, but in rather more informal fashion that those at big-brother Groot Constantia; the estate's Vin de Constance is something of a feature - it's a re-creation of the wine that found favour with Frederick the Great of Prussia, Naploleon Bonaparte and German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Guineafowl strut the grounds and vineyard; steppe buzzards are summer visitors. Buitenverwachting Also a resurrected treasure, the manor house, cellar and stables superbly restored in fairly recent times. Its restaurant regularly wins the top awards. Buitenverwachting's labour practices serve as something of a model for other employers in the tourism and wine industries. One can explore the farm at leisure (horses and cattle are kept). Not so long on the geophysical calendar the Cape Flats lay beneath the ocean and the Peninsula was an island (or rather, two islands). But over the millennia the waters receded to expose a low, sandy area which the early white colonists called 'Die Groote Woeste Vlakte', or Great Desolate Plain, a nightmare of windblown dunes. These were later stabilised with the planting of wattles and other hardy exotic trees (they flourished rather too well and have since spread to destroy much of the region's unique natural plant life). Today the plain, to the north and east of the city but part of the Cape Town metropole, is dense with suburbia. Technically, it is divided into four sections, or what are known as 'substructures' - Tygerberg (big and busy), Oosterberg (largely residential, with few features of note), Blaauwberg (which runs up the western seaboard) and Helderberg (to the east of central Cape Town).
The focus of more commercial and residential development than any other part of the Cape metropolitan area, Tygerberg embraces the International Airport, The University of the Western Cape and a scatter of once-separate towns that are hugely different in size and character. Bellville, one of its bigger components, was until recently a city in its own right; others include Goodwood, Parow, Durbanville, the Epping industrial area, and the what were once known as the 'African townships' of Lingelethu and Khayelitsha. The extensive Tyger Valley Centre (270 retail outlets, nearly 40 restaurants and fast-food eateries, 10 cinemas) and the newer, even bigger, high-tech N1 City development draw the crowds. University of the Western Cape A respected institution of higher learning, though it has had its problems. Of special note is the Maibuye Centre, which holds an immense number and variety of documents and photos relating to the liberation struggle and other hitherto material from South Africa's past. Khayelitsha. This vast and relatively new residential area whose name means 'new home', was established in the late 1980s to house people from the 'squatter camps', or informal settlements (including the strife-torn Crossroads), that had mushroomed around the city with the demise of influx control and other apartheid-type restrictions. It is now home to well over half a million residents. The Anglican Church hosts a bustling craft market. Durbanville An attractively green residential area, 30 kilometres north of central Cape Town, which is noted for its racecourse, its lovely rose garden (thousands of plants on show; cream teas served) and its nature reserve, where you can picnic and watch the busy bird-life. Durbanville also has its wine route, which leads you to half-a-dozen cellars that produce fine vintages.
This section of the Cape metropole stretches up the western coastline to become increasingly rural, ending in the rather picturesque village of Mamre (a couple of its buildings date back to the 1690s; the church congregation will soon celebrate its 200th birthday). Milnerton. A general unremarkable, rather industrial area but its Rietvlei reserve ranks among the region's top bird sanctuaries. Milnerton's Century City is already a shoppers' paradise and will grow rapidly to include
Bloubergstrand, up the coast, offers stunning views of Table Mountain from its beachfront. The village, favoured by rich retirees and those who can afford second homes, has two or three top-ranked restaurants; one of them, Ons Huisie, is housed in a restored fisherman's cottage and is a National Monument.
This is the eastern segment of the Cape Town metropolitan area, much of it a flattish coastal plain (False Bay) that slumbers beneath the strikingly dramatic Hottentots Holland range of mountains. Gordon's Bay, a pretty little coastal fishing, resort and residential village, huddles beneath the mountains, and is popular among vacationers and Capetonian weekenders. It has two beaches (Bikini is especially well sheltered) and plenty of holiday accommodation. Somerset West Along the False Bay coast, on the Cape Town side of Gordon's Bay, and the main centre of the metropole's Helderberg section. Strand, the adjoining municipality, lies to its seaward side. The local craft market is worth exploring. Among the wider area's attractions is the Helderberg Nature Reserve and Vergelegen, an Estate and grand Cape Dutch homestead originally built in 1701 but much altered since then. The grounds are quite stunning in their beauty and variety; special are the Octagonal Garden, the stately old camphor trees, and the rose and herb sections. Visitors have access to the grounds and part of the mansion; there are guided tours of and wine tastings in the modern winery; refreshments are served in the tea garden. For the more mobile tourist, a drive up the precipitous Sir Lowry's Pass, to the top of the Hottentots Holland mountains, will open up some quite stunning vistas. |
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CAPE TOWN CITY 2 Western Cape
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