There are some things you just can’t not do in certain countries. In Cape Town South Africa, that includes a 2-hour drive south to the most southern part of the Africa: Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope.
Theoretically, Cape Point is the area in which the Indian and the Atlantic ocean’s intersect and the Cape of Good Hope is the most southern tip of Africa. Geographically, that point is actually Cape Agulhas, which you can’t reach as it’s in the middle of the ocean off the coast of Cape Point, but, we’re hungry tourists so we’re rounding up.
There are a couple of ways you can get to the Cape of Good Hope. You can take a tour, look into rental cars, or take a train, and then take a tour– you can’t simply walk to the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Point, as they’re located in a nature reserve far away from any main towns. We wanted to rent a car because I love a good road trip, but in the end realized we didn’t have enough time in the country to really enjoy it.
So, we took the train.
Hi Mom, it's me, I'm a tourist and I'm at the bottom of Africa
Now, if you’re traveling through Cape Town I can honestly recommend one thing: DON’T TAKE THE TRAIN.
It’s really inexpensive, I think it cost us about $6 each to get there and back, but the local trains are terrifying. On Sundays there is a special tourist train that runs to Simons Town, where the penguins of Boulder’s Bay are, and I highly recommend taking it. It just so happened to be Sunday, and even though we paid for a local train, the nice people of South Africa Tourist train let us on for free.
The ride there was gorgeous– the train runs right along the water and the views are stunning. But the ride back, we took the local train, and it was horrible. You can pay for “MetroPlus” tickets which are supposed to be better than the back of the train, and we did, but we ran to get the train, ended up sitting in the back, and I spent the next two hours convinced that we were about to be robbed.
Many tourists do get robbed on the train–even those (maybe even especially those) who by MetroPlus tickets. We sat in the back, like I said, and at each stop there were more and more people packed onto that train that I don’t even know how we all fit.
There were people on top of me. There were people staring at me. The train runs right through some of the biggest townships in Cape Town, and as such, we were the only white people–much less foreigners–on the train.
In the end, nothing happened. But I can tell you I was legitimately scared and gripping into my purse. We met up with a local friend and told him we took the train, and he looked at us like we were nuts and told us we got very lucky.
So, word to the wise: Take the tourist train on Sundays if you’re going to take the train.
Anyway: Our adventure took us to Simonstown, where we were hoping to hire a cab to Cape Point. No such luck. We couldn’t find a cab anywhere, but we did run into a German girl who was staying in a hostel, and she said we could hire a ride from the guy who works at the hostel. So that’s what we did.
Cape Point is visually stunning. On the reserve, surrounded by blue ocean, you see ostriches and springbok running wild. There are baboons, too, and jagged rocks that dot the horizon. It’s spectacular. What I didn’t expect, was all the hiking (and I was stupidly wearing flip flops).
The walk from Cape Point to the Cape of Good Hope takes about an hour, and wraps you around the water, on a cliff overlooking the ocean, in some of the most beautiful landscape I’ve seen in quite some time.
It was a really fun day out, and these pesky baboons we saw messing with the street vendors on the way back to town made it even more fun.
Have you ever been to Cape Point?
photo credit top: vic.bergmann
