Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Six Days in the Mother City - Cape Town, South Africa

Checking in from the Mother City - Cape Town! Well ... to be entirely accurate we're doing a #latergram thingy from back home in Singapore. But let's not sweat the small stuff! We were in Cape Town for Six days last week, stalking the African Penguins, getting up close with some Eagles, dodging baboons on wine farms and all round just having one hell of a time.

Cape Town Six Days Itinerary
West Coast view of the Cape Peninsula

We'll be posting up our full itinerary and details of our trip over the next few days in a hope that it'll help in planning your trip to this beautiful city. And if you've never considered vacationing in South Africa up until now, perhaps you'll change your mind soon enough. But first, allow us two minutes of narcissism with a 360° video selfie!



Ahem. We couldn't get all our visited places into the video because strangely enough our GoPro Hero3+ Black decided to partially mulfunction and totally screw up quite a few of our videos and photos. Sadface.

Just a few notes before moving on to the itinerary, though. Cape Town has some extremely unpredictable weather. The locals often mention that you can experience four seasons in a single day here. We experienced a few meals where it was gloomy and cloudy walking in to a cafe for lunch, raining while we were eating and sunny with clear blue skies by the time we were done with food. Unfortunately these weather changes do mean that you can't really structure an itinerary - you more or less have to prepare a list of 'things you want to do' and shuffle them around on the fly as the weather permits.

Cape Town Six Days Itinerary
Stalking an African Penguin and her chick

For example, for us Table Mountain Aerial Cableway was closed due to Gale-force winds for five of the six days we were there, and our Robben Island Ferry was cancelled two days in a row. Despite the stormy weather we were able to do most of what we planned, though.

When's the best season to visit? It really depends - the winter months of July-August are peak Whale-Watching season, but they are also the wettest and so you'd likely need to juggle around your schedule like a circus acrobat. Summers are full of carnivals, outdoor performances, etc but hot days can go up to 40°C. Coming from a tropical, hot-all-year-round country we like to holiday in cooler climates, but of course your mileage will vary.

Cape Town Six Days Itinerary
Close up with a juvenile African Fish Eagle

So without further ado, here's our six day itinerary in the Mother City - Cape Town!

Day 1: Arrive in Cape Town and pick up our rental car. Check in, head to the V&A Waterfront for late lunch, exploration, Scratch Patch and Cave Golf.
Day 2: Day trip along the Cape Peninsula, with stops at the Colourful Changing Rooms at St. James Beach, breakfast in a converted 100-year old train car at Kalk Bay, African Penguin colony at Boulder's Beach and ending at the South-Western most tip of Africa - Cape Point. Drive back up to Cape Town through Chapman's Peak Drive on the Western edge of the Continent.
Day 3: Back to the V&A Watefront to visit the Two Oceans Aquarium, followed by a short seal-watching cruise around the harbour and then chillaxing in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.
Day 4: Paid a visit to the District Six Museum to learn a little about the apartheid era, and then Grout Constantia vineyard along the Constantia Valley wine route.
Day 5: Headed to Hout Bay for a trip to a nearby Seal Colony, then a detour to Spier Wine Farm near Stellenbosch for food and close-ups with an Eagle/falcon rehabilitation centre. Ended the day with a quick trip to Bo-Kaap and then up to Signal Hill for the sunset.
Day 6: The weather finally clears up a bit so we manage to take a trip to Robben Island and visit the Jail where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years before the fall of apartheid. Checked out of the hotel and headed to the airport for our flight back to Johannesburg.

We don't want to cram everything into a single blog post as that would be way too long (and you'd probably lose interest halfway) - so we'll be breaking it up into several posts over the coming days. Hopefully this opener has given you a nice idea of our holiday and do stay tuned for the details, photos and videos of all six days to come! If you've got any comments or questions do feel free to leave them in the comments and we'll try our best to answer!

Click here for the next post in this series: Day One of Six in the Mother City - Cape Town, South Africa

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