If you’re a stranger to Cape Town, this tour will give you a good orientation to the lay of the land. More than that, it will reward you with magnificent beaches, breathtaking views, fascinating history… and nature as nature intended. At the tip of the Cape Peninsula – 60 km south-west of Cape Town – the rugged rocks and sheer cliffs cut deep into the ocean to split False Bay from the colder waters of the western seaboard. This outcrop of the Table Mountain National Park is called Cape Point. Some say this is where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet. What we know for certain is that as many as 26 ships have met their match against this treacherous coast. At the Point, human history and nature’s drama share centre stage. And this is where our sense of adventure will lead us today…

We set off at 8:30, travelling along the Atlantic Seaboard via Sea Point past the playground of beautiful people: Clifton and Camps Bay. A brief stop at a Llandudno look-out point will give you a last glimpse at this side of the Cape Peninsula and the Twelve Apostle range, before we continue over the neck of the mountain and descend to Hout Bay, a quaint village and fishing harbour embraced by mountains and flanked on the one side by a safe swimming beach. (The optional Seal Island boat trip is not included in the cost, but well worth it.)

On along Chapman’s Peak Drive, one of the world’s most breathtaking coastal drives, to Cape Point and the Good Hope Nature Reserve. Here you will see the veldt covered in the famous "fynbos" vegetation of the Cape (with close to 1 100 indigenous plant species, some of which occur nowhere else on earth), and you may well chance upon birdlife, endemic antelope species and zebra, historic lighthouses and of course, shipwrecks. You’ll realize why they say "One Point, a million points of view"! After lunch at a nearby restaurant (not included in the cost), we drive on to historic Simon’s Town, a village with charming Victorian architecture, a naval base and a large penguin colony at the beautiful Boulders Beach. Your day of exploring nature and the great outdoors would not be complete without a visit to the world-acclaimed Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens – a vast expanse of indigenous veldt (528 hectares) and cultivated gardens (36 hectares) set against the eastern foothills of Table Mountain – a stone’s throw from the city. By now, the shadow of Table Mountain will be beginning to wrap over the gardens, as the sun starts its descent over the ocean lapping at the beach of Llandudno - across the mountain where we were this morning, so many memorable impressions ago