May 2007
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Award-winning novelist Justin Cartwright celebrates the freezing surf, gourmet restaurants and hedonistic beaches of the city of his birth
When I arrive in Cape Town, after the gloom of a January London day, there is a key moment when my spirits lift. I am lying for the first time on my favourite beach, Llandudno. I have taken a pounding in the freezing surf, the mountain rises vertiginously behind, green, grey and endlessly changing, and the sun is dispelling memories of winter. Around me I hear noises of children playing, the sound of beach tennis – the rubber balls on plywood bats – and the roar of the surf. Surfers are riding the immense breakers; overhead sparrowhawks circle. And then, without warning, I have the feeling that there is nowhere else on earth I would rather be.
Cape Town is where I was born, and where I have been returning every year for the past ten. It is an extraordinary city: it clings to the tip of Africa around its own mountain range, which starts in town with Table Mountain and extends 40 miles to Cape Point to the south, one of the most spectacular places I have ever been. It is a city, but it is also a small state; in Africa, but not really of Africa, with its own floral kingdom, its own Creole people and its persistent mixture of British and Dutch influence. It can be enjoyed at many levels, sheer hedonism being, of course, the most popular, but there is also a fascinating, and dark history to be explored on Robben Island (+27 21 413 4200; robben-island.org.za) and at the District Six Museum (+27 21 466 7200; districtsix.co.za).
Allow a day to make a round trip from Cape Town to Cape Point. Here the Atlantic and the Indian oceans meet. The western side of Cape Town, the spectacular side, has wonderful suburbs like Camps Bay and sensational beaches, but the water is freezing. You will need a thick wetsuit on the hottest day. The eastern side is the Indian Ocean, and the water is so warm, you can stay in it for hours. It is the home of the great white shark.
Of the beaches, Clifton, Camps Bay and Llandudno, minutes from the centre of town, are wonderful. The four beaches at Clifton are good when the famous South Easter is strong, as they are sheltered. Camps Bay has many good restaurants and cafés and is a place of some charm. Llandudno, where property prices have surged, has no shops or restaurants, and is hard to approach, but it is utterly unspoilt. Just past Llandudno is Sandy Bay. Don’t be surprised to see naked men and women sunning themselves; it has long had a raffish reputation.
Continue down the western side of the peninsula to Hout Bay, a port where you can buy fish and lobsters and stop for a ludicrously cheap buffet lunch at La Cuccina on Victoria Road (+27 21 790 8008) and then go all the way on to Cape Point, passing over the sensational Chapman’s Peak, and pausing at wonderfully wild beaches like Noordhoek, Kommetjie, Crayfish Factory, Misty Cliffs and Scarborough. Stock up at the Food Barn in Noordhoek Village (+27 21 789 1390; noordhoekvillage.co.za) for a great picnic or a light meal; it is now run by one of the best chefs in South Africa. Take the old, coastal road out of Kommetjie.
If you want to visit Robben Island, go early, before the wind gets up, and enjoy breakfast at the Waterfront. Later, take the cable car up Table Mountain (you should book your departure) or walk. You can also approach Table Mountain from the pass above Constantia, walking all the way to the cable car and coming down that way. This takes about five hours.
Less taxing is the walk down to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens (+27 21 799 8899; sanbi.org) from Constantia Neck, which takes an hour. Kirstenbosch is the most spectacular garden in the world, rising up the mountain and merging seamlessly with the natural vegetation. In the summer there are concerts, and Cape Town is at its best, multiracial crowds mingling cheerfully and enthusiastically, picnics spread on the immaculate lawns as the music drowns out the protesting guinea fowl and the sun sets behind the mountain.
Cape Town – and some of the small towns of the winelands further afield – have some terrific restaurants. My favourite, predictably, is Constantia Uitsig (+27 21 794 4480; constantiauitsig.co.za), a wine estate south of Constantia with two restaurants and a café. By South African standards they are expensive, but consistently excellent.
La Colombe (+27 21 794 2390) is more French, while Uitsig itself is a fusion of Cape and Mediterranean dishes. The Spaanschemat River Café (+27 21 794 3010) on the estate does lunches and teas and sells the estate’s excellent wines. Camps Bay has The Codfather (+27 21 438 0782). Approach the counter, which has every possible available fish and squid on display, and point out what you want.
For me, the fascination of Cape Town is that within this astonishing natural setting lies a unique city that rewards the curious. It has a certain reluctance to face up to the world in which it finds itself: it doesn’t fully accept that it is part of Africa, although Africa is increasingly arriving on its doorstep.
Cape Town may be sleepy, rather out of touch and under threat, but it has – so far – managed to preserve its strangely seductive character.
