Cape Point
The Cape Peninsula including Cape of Good Hope is doubtless one of the most beautiful places in the world. Since 1998, the region around the Table Mountain and some areas of the Cape Peninsula is called Cape Peninsula National Park. Particularly impressive is the area between Simons Town and Cape Point. Here you can find many wonderful hiking routes.
Boulders Beach in Simons Town
Boulders Beach is a sheltered beach made up of inlets between granite boulders, from which the name originated. It is located in the Cape Peninsula, near Simon's Town towards Cape Point, near Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It is also commonly known as Boulders Bay. It is a popular tourist stop because of a colony of African Penguins which settled there in 1982. Boulders Beach forms part of the Table Mountain National Park.
Although set in the midst of a residential area, it is one of the few sites where these vulnerable birds (Spheniscus demersus) can be observed at close range, wandering freely in a protected natural environment. From just two breeding pairs in 1982, the penguin colony has grown to about 3,000 in recent years. This is partly due to the reduction in commercial pelagic trawling in False Bay, which has increased the supply of pilchards and anchovy, which form part of the penguins' diet.
Address:
Boulders Beach is just down the road from Simons Town on the False Bay coast
Price: R40 p.p.
Open:
December - January: 07h00 to 19h30
February - March: 08h00 to 18h30
April - September: 08h00 to 17h00
October - November: 08h00 to 18h30
Cape Point
Bartholomeu Dias, the Portuguese seafarer, was the first to sail around the Cape. This was in 1488. On his return voyage, which was particularly stormy, Dias stopped at the south-western tip of South Africa, and named it Cabo Tormentoso, or Cape of Storms. King John of Portugal later gave it the name Cabo da Boa Esperança, or Cape of Good Hope. Another Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, rounded the Cape on 22 November 1497 on his way to India.
The journeys of these explorers led to the establishment of the Cape sea route. This meant more regular sailings around the tip of Africa. It also indirectly led to a number of casualties along these unpredictable shores. Today, shipwrecks and stone crosses bear testimony to the treacherous and challenging historic sea route.
Two Oceans Restaurant
From Two Oceans Restaurant you’ll take in sweeping views of False Bay, way below. The restaurant, perched high above the crashing waves, has been designed to ensure that all guests can enjoy the incredible vistas.
Lighthouses
The lighthouse at Cape Point is the most powerful on the South African coast. It has a range of 63 kilometers, and beams out a group of three flashes of 10 million candlepower each, every 30 seconds. But, through history, mariners had taken a rather dimmer view of warning beacons around the Point.
Buffelsfontein Visitors Centre
To really get to know Cape Point and its attractions up close and personal, a visit to the Buffelsfontein Visitor Centre is an essential stopover. Here you’ll be treated to a wealth of artefact displays, and audiovisual presentations that will keep you spellbound. Well researched and beautifully laid out information material will interpret all aspects of the area's natural and cultural wealth for you.
Price: R80 p.p.
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa. There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometers to the east-southeast. The Atlantic and Indian oceans meet at the point where the warm-water Agulhas current meets the cold water Benguela current and turns back on itself – a point that fluctuates between Cape Agulhas and Cape Point, about one kilometers east of the Cape of Good Hope.
When following the western side of the African coastline from the equator, however, the Cape of Good Hope marks the point where a ship begins to travel more eastward than southward. Thus the first modern rounding of the Cape in 1488 by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias was a milestone in the attempts by the Portuguese to establish direct trade relations with the Far East (although in his histories Herodotus proves, disbelievingly, that some Phoenicians had done so far earlier than this). Dias called the cape Cabo das Tormentas. "Cape of Tempests" was the original name of the "Cape of Good Hope".
Address:
south-west corner of the Cape Peninsula, about 2.3 kilometers, west and a little south of Cape Point on the south-east corner
Price: R80 p.p.