The Cape, by air, land and sea
Three ways to see the Cape as it deserves to be seen - unhurried, from above, and entirely on your own terms.
The Cape is beautiful from a car window. It is something else entirely from a helicopter at golden hour, from the deck of a boat as the light goes long, or on a cliff road driven slowly with someone else at the wheel. The scenery is the same; what changes is the pace - and the fact that someone else is doing the arranging. Here are three ways to see the Cape as it deserves to be seen, and how we would build each of them into a stay.
By air
The winelands are forty minutes by road and twenty by helicopter, and the twenty minutes are the better part of the day. You lift off from the city, follow the mountains inland, and set down at an estate for lunch among the vines before flying home over the peninsula as the afternoon softens. It is the kind of thing that turns an anniversary, a proposal or a landmark birthday into a story told for years afterwards.
If lunch is more than you are after, a scenic flight is the shortest route to the view of a lifetime: Table Mountain from above, the Twelve Apostles falling into the sea, Cape Point where the oceans seem to meet, and the long white curve of the beaches. Go on a clear, still day, and time it for late afternoon when the light is at its most generous. We will arrange the flight, the timing, and a car waiting at either end.
By sea
Cape Town meets the ocean at every turn, and the ocean is best met from the water. A private charter makes an occasion of an evening - sundowners on deck as the Twelve Apostles catch the last of the light, a slow cruise past the Clifton coves, perhaps a swim from the boat where the water lies still. No crowds, no fixed departure, and no schedule but your own.
There is a season for it, too. From roughly June to November the southern right and humpback whales gather along the coast, and a private boat is the quietest way to see them - close, unhurried, and without the crowd of a public trip. In summer the same deck becomes a sunset cruise, or a day out to the coves and quiet beaches you cannot reach by road. Tell us the mood, and we match the vessel and the route to it.
By land
Some of the world's great drives are here, and they are wasted at speed. Chapman's Peak clings to the cliffs between Hout Bay and Noordhoek - nine kilometres and more than a hundred bends carved into the mountain above the sea. Clarence Drive traces the coast from Gordon's Bay into the Kogelberg, the mountains falling straight into the water and, in season, whales just offshore. The Franschhoek Pass climbs out of the valley to a view worth pulling over for.
The pleasure is in taking them slowly, and in not having to watch the road. With a private chauffeur, each drive becomes an afternoon rather than a transfer: a coastal road to a long lunch, the Helshoogte Pass to a winelands tasting, the peninsula loop out to Cape Point and back along the other coast. You take in the view; we take care of the rest.
However you choose to see it - from the air, the water, or a quiet road - the arranging is ours. You have only to decide which view you would like first.
Choose your first view
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