A stunning Cape Town day: Cape of Good Hope, Cape Point, Boulders Beach and Chapman’s Peak Drive!

Ok, so I know I’m a bit all over the place here, writing our second-to-last post on Madagascar and then sharing our New Zealand itinerary, and now starting a post on South Africa, but there are just too many fun things to share! Also, I’m a bit more behind than anticipated because our overall trip is coming to an end and I’m trying to squeeze out every moment of having fun with Damian and, thus, not writing as much. But I will catch up (perhaps slowly). Anyway, today’s post is about a gorgeous day we had in Cape Town – driving out through Chapman’s Peak Drive and heading to the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Point and Boulders Beach!

Just to offer a lay of the land here, you haven’t seen a “here’s our South Africa” itinerary post from us like you have seen for Madagascar, Croatia, Italy and New Zealand (Portugal, Brazil, and Norway will be added eventually), but that’s because our whole plan for South Africa was – stay in Cape Town for two weeks. And, when we got to our AirBnB and saw the epic views of Table Mountain out of our window, we knew we had made the right choice.

Especially after the hectic schedule we had in Madagascar, it was nice to settle down in one place and have flexibility on chill days and activity days. And we discovered Cape Town is an awesome city and it got added to the list of “places we could live if they weren’t so far away from our friends and family”. Anyway, on one of our activity days we decided to do a classic Cape Town day-trip itinerary, and dang was it gorgeous. So, let’s go!

Stop 1: Chapman’s Peak Drive

Chapman’s Peak Drive is a gorgeous coastal drive, similar to the Pacific Coast Highway in California and Great Ocean Road outside of Melbourne. The road was carved out in the 1910s and 1920s, which is crazy to think about! On one side of the road you are up against the mountain and on the other there is a sheer cliff drop into the ocean. It’s totally safe, of course, but makes for some stunning views.

There’s a part of the road you can drive for free and then to go the rest of the way you have to pay a toll – it’s less than US$5 and so worth it. Throughout the drive you can understand what the money goes to as well, it can’t be easy to maintain the road, prevent rock falls, set up lookout points, etc.

It was a gorgeous sunny day and it was so beautiful to stop and look out at the amazing coast of Cape Town and South Africa. I’d say Chapman’s Peak Drive is a must do for anyone visiting the area. Though, one word of advice, we did this road leaving Cape Town, and we were driving on the left, and the ocean was on the right. This made stopping at viewing points a little more difficult so next time I’d probably drive the reverse direction and drive into Cape Town!

Stop 2: Cape of Good Hope

After finishing Chapman’s Peak Drive in Noordhoek we continued down the west side (towards Kommetjie) to take the more scenic route for the one-hour drive to the Cape of Good Hope. You can also go the other way as well (and stop on Boulders Beach on the way down). On the drive we saw lots of fun animals! Baboons and ostriches (including a baby!) and turtles. Too cute.

Anyway, at one time people thought the Cape of Good Hope was the southern-most point in Africa, though that is now known to not be true, it does still claim to be the south-western-most point in Africa, and I have no idea if that is true. But, we’ll go with it, why not!

We really, really enjoyed exploring this area. There are so many fun rocks and lookout points to climb up to and look out from, and the views were stunning. Also, even though it was the end of the season we saw some whales way out in the water! We were lucky to get such a beautiful day to explore this amazing place. (also, can you see tiny Damian in the first picture below?)

We asked a couple random people to take pictures of us here and there (as we always do) and we ended up getting one of my favorite pictures of the trip. I mean, tell me this coastline isn’t just epic! We explored around here a bit more and then headed off to our next stop.

Stop 3: Cape Point

You can hike from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Point in about an hour, but since we had another stop we wanted to hit up after we decided to do the drive in less than ten minutes instead. Cape Point is another small peninsula that was once thought to be the southern-most point of Africa, but this was also proved not to be true. Oh science, constantly teaching us new things!

There is a café and restaurant at Cape Point, and we ate a quick lunch and then got to exploring! You can take the gondola or walk up, and we decided to gondola up and then walk down. To be honest, although there were also some nice views here, overall the area was much more developed than the Cape of Good Hope. This also meant more tour buses and more tourists all around, so while we enjoyed it, we definitely enjoyed the Cape of Good Hope more.

Stop 4: Boulders Beach

After Cape Point we had one more stop on our epic day of South African coastal beauty – Boulders Beach, which was only a 30-minute drive away. Boulders Beach is a little beach (duh) that is home to a protected penguin colony. The colony started in 1982 with only two breeding pairs and now there are ~3,000 birds there, isn’t that crazy?

In order to protect the penguins and to make it easier for viewers the parks service has erected boardwalks and viewing platforms to see the penguins. Because of this there is an entry fee, but again, it’s so worth it! I mean, just check out this cuteness.

We had such a good time just standing around on the boardwalk and watching these little penguins playing around. It was molting season as well so a bunch of the penguins were shedding their feathers, which means they weren’t swimming or eating for the weeks where they were molting! And finally, there were also a bunch of baby penguins being fed by their parents, which was just the cutest. We took a video that shows just how in awe we were about these creatures, you can see it below.

More on South Africa – coming up!

We had so much fun visiting Chapman’s Peak Drive, the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Point and Boulders Beach, and this is just the beginning of how much fun we had in Cape Town. I’m excited to share more of our fun times there with you soon!