17 February Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope

You can't come to Cape Town and not visit the Cape of Good Hope. It's world famous and it's part of Table Mountain national park.

looks like a mini croc

old lighthouse top, new in distance

When we sailed around Cape Agulhas we were at the most southern point of the African continent. Cape Agulhas is a hundred miles south of Cape Point and, for us, marked the end of Indian Ocean crossing and the start of the South Atlantic.

Dias beach and Cape of Good Hope

When the first European explorers came to Africa they approached from the west. Dias rounded the Cape of Storms before continuing to Mossel Bay. East of Cape Point is False Bay, a big wide bay, where is poor visibility you wouldn't see the headland to the east. Early explorers came around Cape Point and heading north once more thought they had passed the most southerly point of the continent. It was a false assumption and hence the name False Bay.

Cape Point is a dramatic knife's edge of rock which slices into the Atlantic with two lighthouses. The first and highest one proved ineffective in fog because it was hidden from view and ships were lost on the reefs. A new lighthouse set further out on the point and at a lower elevation is the most powerful on the South African coast.

park antelope

From Good Hope with Cp Point behind

From the entrance gate it was a 13kms drive to the car park below the light houses. You can take a short funicular ride part way to the top. We walked, first to the old light house and then down and out to the close to the new light house. You can't go all the way out. The path is closed. The views were great on this clear and sunny day.

We walked back towards the car park and then found a path along the cliffs which would take across the top of Dias beach and out to the headland above the Cape of Good Hope. This is the most SW point of the African continent and was named by Sir Francis Drake who rounded it on a day when the weather was good.

The actual cape at sea level looks like any other bit of rock so the park authorities have installed a large sign with the GPS co-ordinates to enable the multitude of tourists to photograph themselves in front of it. Without the sign how would you know where you were?

Cape of Good Hope behind tourists