Day trips from Cape Town | globevisuals.com

After our course ended, we had two days to explore the surroundings of Cape Town. Here are some ideas for the day-trips.

Muizenberg

This beach is famous for its good waves and therefore loved by surfers from all over the world. To rent a surfboard and a wetsuit will cost you about R100 for one hour.

We were thinking about the option when we arrived at the beach. However, to our disappointment, a shark alarm came and all swimmers and surfers were called out of water. The second alarm followed shortly and we were not sure if we were ready to swim or surf in the water where sharks were potentially circling around.

The beautiful and colorful scenery compensated for that in full! Have you seen a beach where little bright-colored houses are lining up next to the water? So, this is that beach!

Another restaurant which was recommended to us in Kalk Bay is right in front of the Cape to Cuba and is called Brass Bell. In this restaurant you can sit directly over the ocean.

By the way, it is also possible to go to Muizenberg and Kalk Bay with a train. Everybody says that this is one of the most scenic rides ever and the return ticket costs only around R30!

Boulders Beach

After half a day at the beach you can visit another beach, but for this time watching cute creatures – the African penguins.

There are two ways to get acquainted with them: to take a free Burgher’s walk on and along the big stones and time to time meeting some individuals or even families or to pay R75 per person (not sure about the real price, but this was the amount we paid for entering the area without a ticket) and visit the whole black-and-white crowd at the beach.

Franschhoek Wine Tram

One of the nicest things we have done in South Africa was the wine tram experience. You have to plan at least a full day (and a night) for this trip.

There are plenty of wine estates in South Africa and some of them offer a combined program as for example Franschhoek. It’s about one-hour drive to this small town from Cape Town: you can either rent a car or arrange for a transfer (which was quite pricy – R550 per person).

For the wine tour you can book tickets in advance online: http://winetram.co.za/ and choose one out of six different wine routes and enjoy hop on hop off service with a retro-tram or tram-bus between the finest wineries of the Franschhoek Valley. The ticket price is R220 per person. We took the purple line and handled three stops (maximum is six, if you wish to spend only one hour per wine estate).

We liked the first on our list, Vrede en Lust estate a lot: the views are beautiful and for five different wines you pay about one Euro. The second estate, Allée Bleue, offered us an intricate cheese platter. The third and the last estate, Backsberg, won us with its generosity: we were the last guests on the tour and the first who ordered Whisky tasting additionally to wine tasting. The estate celebrated this with us over a free bottle of champagne. No need to say that our mood was afterwards high-level!

When you go for a dinner later, ensure you make a reservation in advance – to our surprise, all places with good rate were fully booked! We managed to get a table at the Indian restaurant Marigold. The food was tasty, but portions quite small. Make a mental note that they are not for sharing;)

For drinks and party we headed to the Elefant and Barrel. Somehow, all other bars were already closed at 10 pm. We were lucky to have live music in the evening and danced a lot!