The Cape Peninsula
One of our favorite days out of Cape Town heads south down the narrow finger of land that trails off the bottom of Africa, the Cape Peninsula. It is a full day of pure scenery, and the drive itself is half the pleasure. You leave the city behind and trace the coast through the seaside villages of the Atlantic, where the mountains drop straight to the sea and small harbors and white beaches come and go, building slowly toward the wild headland at the very tip.
The high point of the drive is Chapman's Peak Drive, a road carved into the cliff face above the ocean that twists and turns for nine breathtaking kilometers, the water far below on one side and the rock rising sheer on the other. Beyond it the land opens into the Cape of Good Hope nature reserve, a windswept world of fynbos and rocky headlands where you can walk out to Cape Point and stand on the cliffs above the meeting of two great oceans, the old lighthouse on the ridge and the surf breaking white on the rocks below.
On the way back up the warmer False Bay side you stop at Boulders Beach, where a colony of African penguins has made its home among the granite boulders and white sand. A raised boardwalk lets you walk right out among them as they waddle along the beach and nest in the dunes, an unlikely and wonderful sight so close to a big city. We build the day so the drive flows, the timing works, and you reach the penguins and the Point with room to linger rather than rush.
