Table Mountain dominates Cape Town. Table Mountain is Cape Town. Without the mountain, it’s unlikely the city would ever have developed.
At 1,086 metres (3,563 ft) above sea level at its highest point, it’s not exactly small and its dramatic setting makes it seem huge. Apparently it can be seen from 125 miles out to sea.
Table Mountain is at the northern end of the Cape Peninsula and its large plateau includes the peninsula’s highest point. Together with the range of hills stretching 50km down the peninsula to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope, the whole peninsula has been, for hundreds of years, a pretty dramatic corner to turn for sailors heading east into the Indian Ocean, or from there back into the Atlantic and north to Europe.
For the adventurous, there are many trails you can use to climb the mountain. Looking down from the vantage point of the easy way up – the cable car – the trails look fairly precipitous and are clearly not something to be embarked upon lightly…
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David Cape Town
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| Kalk Bay |
For our time in South Africa we rented an apartment in Kalk Bay, one of the string of small towns running along the eastern side of the Cape Peninsula and looking out onto False Bay. This is a huge bay some 32km across and a great place for whale spotting in the latter part of the year.
Being all of 50 metres from the shore where most of the time the waves come crashing in, the apartment more than satisfied our desire to be by the sea. We just ignored the rather noisy main road and railway line in between.
Kalk Bay town is a sweet little place with a colonnaded main street of art, antique, clothing and bric-a-brac shops together with numerous coffee shops and restaurants. It has a great, retro, laid-back atmosphere and is full of great, retro, laid-back people. Its bohemian reputation is particularly noticeable among the ladies of the town, some of whom seem to follow the dress code of shutting their eyes and reaching into the dressing-up box every morning.
There is a substantial harbour formed by two large sea walls that not only protect a small fishing fleet, but also attract large numbers of anglers and on-lookers. Five restaurants on the harbour walls add to the attractiveness of the place, as do regular visitors Rosie the seal and her friends who perform for anyone kind enough to throw them fish…
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David Cape Town