04 May 2024

Cape Town

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The Cape escape

The clock was ticking the moment Diana Appleyard's jet touched down in Cape Town. She had just three days in the beautiful city - how much could she see before time ran out?

Cape Town - Dutch architecture in the winelands

Cape Town - Table Mountain dominates the sky

1 Dutch architecture in the winelands 2 Table Mountain dominates the sky 3 A Table Mountain gondola

EVEN LOOKING AT THE ITNIERARY made me feel exhausted. Arrive in Cape Town, take taxi from the airport, rest in room for half an hour and then take a cable car up Table Mountain and spend two hours walking around the summit.

My eyes skimmed down the page, packed with vineyard visits, sight-seeing and boat trips, not to mention lunch and dinner in the many and various restaurants Cape Town has to offer.

Little free time seemed built in - but this was a long weekend visit and a lot had to be packed in. I’d never been to South Africa before, and it was fascinating to encounter what is effectively a baby nation.

The airport was efficient and clean and the roads phe-nomenally good for Africa. But driving into the city you realise the problems the country still faces, in the form of mile after mile of shanty towns.

The forward thinking city

These are the townships, the dark underbelly of this optimistic ‘rainbow’ nation. Thousands upon thousands of black Africans still live in these communities, which are basic corrugated iron shacks resting on wooden poles, barely feet apart.

Nearer the city, conditions gradually improve: there are purposebuilt houses, grassy areas, schools and playgrounds. Electricity has been supplied to the townships, but conditions must be unbearable when it rains and goodness knows about sanitation.

The city centre, however, is entirely different. Incredibly clean, smart and international, it has a charm all of its own, nestling along the coastline in front of the huge mountain ranges of Table Mountain and Lion’s Head.

Our hotel, Cape Grace, was on the new waterfront, which is an impressive development of shops, hotels, restaurants and bars around a scenic series of harbours, where millionaires’ yachts bob in the sunlight.

The hotel is wonderful - several times voted the best in the world. Our glorious room looked out over the harbour. Such luxury doesn’t come cheap but prices compare favourably with other major cities.

In Cape Town you can eat like a king, drink the most gorgeous wines, and still have change from £50 for two.

House prices are also cheap - we saw adverts for a four-bedroomed villa with a pool in Camps Bay for under £200,000.

It also felt very safe in the city. Having travelled widely on this continent, I found Cape Town by far the safest African city to visit, and the fact that everyone speaks English makes a big difference.

Everyone we chatted to, from cabbies to tour guides to waiters, said there is real determination to make sure everyone has the chance to succeed, regardless of race or creed, and that makes the city feel highly energetic and forward- thinking.

Seafood and wine

We began our first day with a vertiginous whizz up Table Mountain. The views are excellent but you’re encouraged not to stray from the paths and we did feel rather herded along. But it’s still the best way to view all of Cape Town.

We came down to Camps Bay for lunch. I instantly fell in love with this area, for me the most enchanting area of Cape Town. Restaurants line the seafront, with a wide, sandy beach and waving palm trees.

It has a very relaxed, almost bohemian feel, and I could imagine living in the hills here, strolling down to the bay for lunch, browsing around the little boutique shops - if only one didn’t have to work for a living. We lunched at Paranga, a seafood restaurant which I would heartily recommend due to its gorgeous décor, a charming and very good-looking waiter and delicious food.

After oysters, squid and Stellenbosch dry white wine we grabbed a couple of hours’ much-needed sleep before eating in the hotel that night.

The meal was delicious, but by ten o’clock I was flagging. Wine, of course, is a big reason why people flock to South Africa, and the next day we had a full day trip around the vineyards.

There are so many it’s impossible to cram them all in, but we visited KSV, one of the big conglomerates, where we had a whistlestop tour of the winemaking process.

Equally interesting was the chance to look at the scenery and the towns around Cape Town, which reveal so much about the country’s heritage.

One minute you could be in Holland with the wooden Dutch houses, the next an English country village, the next on the wide open plains of Africa.

Of the small vineyards we visited, my favourite was Fairview, which makes cheese as well as wine. The owner has created the imaginatively-named Goats Do Roam wine label because of his love of goats. That night we ate at Baia, a trendy seafood restaurant on the waterfront.

Variety of wildlife

The seafood platter has to be seen to be believed and even with two bottles of wine the bill was under £70. Our whirlwind weekend was proving quite spectacular. Buskers serenade you, and limbo-dancers and fire-eaters add to the colour and spectacle.

There’s also a huge variety of wildlife - while we were on our short boat trip to Robben Island on the third day, we had the incredible good fortune of seeing a whale and her baby in the harbour, their great arching black backs just yards from our boat.

At Robben Island, you are taken around the former prison by exinmates, whose stories are so moving. There is, understandably, a lot of anger against the apartheid movement and the injustices of the previous regime, but a determination to look forward and not back.

Standing in Mandela’s tiny grey cell, it’s almost impossible to imagine he spent 12 years here. On our last night we ate at The Codfather restaurant in Camps Bay, where you choose your seafood or fish raw, and then they cook it on an open grill.

By now I had just about settled into the ‘chilled out’ way of life in Cape Town - but guess what, it was time to go home. It definitely is possible to see much that the city has to offer in a long weekend - but I would much rather take a week.

I would have liked more time to potter about the craft shops on the waterfront, or just sit in a café and watch the world go by.

But when I’m stuck on the rainlashed M25, I can still imagine I’m sitting at an outside table at Paranga with a gentle breeze waving the fronds of the palm trees, the sun reflecting off the white sand - and a choice to make between the Sauvignon or the Chenin Blanc…

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