South Africa

• The Cape Escape - Cape Town
• My Mountain High in Cape Town - Cape Town
• The Drop Zone - Cape Town
• On the trail to true adventure - Johannesburg
• The great es-Cape - Cape Town
• Come into the Garden - The Garden Route
• My Zulu Extravaganza - Durban
• Up Close and Personal - South African Safari
• Tracking Big Game - Kruger National Park
• Sleeping with the Lions - South African Safari
• A Safari with real pride - South African Safari
• Where the Lion King comes to Life - South African Safari
• Our guide to the top 10 safaris - South African Safari
• A Roaring Success - Victoria Falls
• Come into the Garden - The Garden Route
• The Worlds Most Beautiful Road? - The Garden Route
• Zipping off to Zanzibar - Zanzibar, Kenya
• Africa's catch of the day - Mozambique
• The Cape escape… and it was right up my Street - Garden Route: South Africa
• The nation kissed by a rainbow - South Africa
• Our wild silver wedding! - Kenya

FOR THE FIRST FIVE DAYS a thick cloud poured over the top of Table Mountain like dry ice from a stage as I waited in the wings, kicking my heels. ‘I’m sorry,’ said the concierge putting down his phone. ‘The cable car’s not running today.’ I wasn’t so sorry. It looked like a cloud to eat cablecars, a funicular triangle over Africa, swallowing tourists without a trace.

But then, on the sixth day it cleared, I woke to a beautiful cloudless day and Table Mountain once again looked as benign as one of the Mendip Hills. ‘Ooh I’m sorry,’ said the concierge, who had a cheery way of imparting gloomy news. ‘There’s a two-hour wait for the mountain today.’ I wasn’t so sorry, not when I finally stood at the broad top, flanked by Devil’s Peak and Lion’s Head and gazed out over the city, across the peninsula and down towards the Cape of Good Hope.

Like most schoolchildren I was taught the Cape Of Good Hope was one of the world’s great wild places, that an expedition there would take planning, skill and courage (not to mention a team of porters and enough water to last a week). I never dreamt one day I would take a leisurely drive to the end of Africa, along a beautiful scenic route and on a sunny Sunday morning, elbow on the windowsill, whistling along with Bach.

As if I was royalty

I left the Nellie after breakfast. The Mount Nelson, a raspberry mousse coloured palace, is one of the greatest hotels in the country, an approachable old dame who has just enjoyed a facelift, and with a devoted set who return each year to enjoy her charms. A guard in a white helmet saluted at me as if I was royalty as I swung my car down the palm-lined drive and out through the colonnaded gateway.

Sunday is a day for the beach on the Cape Peninsula and everyone has their favourite strip. Ask Capetonians which is best and you are likely to start an argument. But although those closest to the city, such as Clifton, fill up fastest, I preferred the cameo of a beach at Llandudno, book-ended by hills and a rusty wreck, a lone dogwalker enjoying the early sun as his collie chased startled seagulls across the sand.

Welcome to the republic of Hout Bay, said the sign on the outskirts of the west coast fishing port. There must be something of a pioneering spirit here. The townsfolk for a while, actually charged an entrance fee. This is the headquarters of Cape Peninsula’s crayfishing fleet and keen fishermen also flock there to attend the annual Hout Bay Snoek Festival.

In the valley nearby, I found the country’s largest bird park. The World of Birds is a superbly landscaped series of aviaries with more than 3,000 birds from 500 species on show.

Stunning views

Beyond Hout Bay the road took a dramatic turn towards Chapman’s Peak, a crusty mille feuille of layered, multicoloured sandstone cliffs skirting a 2,000 foot drop and with stunning views along the coast before theroad dropped towards the flatlands around Noordhoek and on to the sea-swept village of Scarborough, a hamlet of holiday cottages.

Here the road swung inland into a conservation area, a peaceful floral reserve and animal sanctuary. With its long white beaches, smooth hills and a shimmering carpet of spring flowers — yellow athanasia, orange protea, white metalasia, purple pelargonium —, this all reminded me of the Western Isles of Scotland, until I spotted a troop of baboons.

According to the visitor centre, there were other animals to be seen; duikers, eland, zebra, springbok and bontebok. But suddenly I was in a hurry to reach land’s end.

At last I stood on the Cape of Good Hope itself, the graveyard of ships, at the confluence of two great oceans. Here, as witnessed by many sailors, the Flying Dutchman, a sailing spectre, is destined to struggle, sails torn, mast shattered, through the storm-tossed sea for eternity with the ghostly Captain Van der Decken clinging to the wheel, still swearing to round the Cape. I left the Cape in high spirits and, beyond the nature reserve, at Boulder’s Bay, near the naval port of Simon’s Town, rolled up my trouser legs and waded beside tiny penguins, so small and comical, they looked like wind-up toys.

Beside me a toddler in a bathing suit screamed with delight as she chased a penguin, both of them flapping their little arms until the roles were reversed and she ran away in terror. By Fish Hoek, where the east coast railway runs so close to the Indian Ocean that spraysplashes against the carriage windows, I saw a family of five whales rolling in the surf so near to the shore I could count the barnacles on their backs and hear the rush of their breath blasting out of their blowholes.

I was going to stop for lunch there, but I had heard Fish Hoek is the only ‘dry town’ in southern Africa. The father of the town, Lord Charles Somerset, was so concerned about the likely influence of drunken sailors in the naval base next door, he banned all sales of alcohol within the municipal limits.

A paintbox of beach huts

Instead I picnicked at the seaside resort of Muizenberg, on the same white sands about which Rudyard Kipling once waxed so lyrical (‘white as the sands of Muizenberg spun before the gale’) although on this day they wore all the colours of the rainbow with a paintbox of beach huts along the shore in primary and pastel colours and a Muslim wedding party in brilliant robes enjoying lunch.

A bracing south easterly wind had sprung up, whipping a fine film of sand into the sandwiches, sending hats spinning along the sand. With its old boarding houses and turn of the century villas, Muizenberg looked like an old fashioned English seaside town.

From Muizenberg, the road, in one direction, continues along the southern coast to join the famous Garden Route. In the other direction it slips inland back towards Cape Town and the Wine Route around the Constantia homesteads. It was early evening when I returned to the Mount Nelson, but still the sun was warm on the back of my neck. I did not exactly feel I had undertaken a journey to the Cape of Good Hope (I still had half a tank of petrol left after all), but at least I had seen whales along the way and walked with penguins and I had strolled along the sands of Muizenburg - which was an adventure of sorts. And as dusk fell and I began to doze off in a comfortable,thickly padded armchair, I could not help noticing a layer of cloud once more tumbling over the edges of the mountain, closing in like curtains at the end of a play.