Cape Town Activities
Cape Town with Teenagers
Teenagers are the hardest group to plan a trip around, and not because they are difficult. It is that the things built for children bore them and the things built for adults will not take them. Cape Town is unusually well set up for the gap in between, but the gap has edges, and most of those edges are numbers.
So this list leads with the numbers. Every entry below carries its actual limit, and they vary far more than you would expect: fourteen to step off Signal Hill under a paraglider, sixteen to drive a jet ski but ten to ride along on one, ten to take a gravity scooter down Table Mountain, a height in metres for an e-bike, a weight in kilograms for a skydive. A fifteen-year-old can do most of what follows and is shut out of two of them entirely.
Check the limit before you raise the idea. That is the most useful thing in this article.
Everything here is within about an hour of the city. That is deliberate. Cape Town has no shortage of thrilling things a teenager can legally do without committing the family to a day in the car.
The ones with the hardest limits
Start here, because these three largely decide themselves. Paragliding sets a minimum age of fourteen. The aquarium dive needs a qualification your teenager either already holds or does not. The jet skis set sixteen to drive and ten to ride along, which for a family of mixed ages changes who is doing what before you have booked anything.
From age 14. Flights are weather dependent and confirmed on the day.
Tandem Paragliding
Nowhere else does a city of this size let you step off a mountain and fly over the middle of it. The launch is Signal Hill or Lion’s Head, chosen on the day for whichever way the wind is running. You are clipped in alongside a SAHPA-licensed pilot who does all of the flying, and the wing, harness, helmet and reserve are supplied. Your part is to run a few steps and keep running until the ground stops being there.
What follows is quieter than people expect. The city arranges itself below, the Atlantic opens out to one side and Table Mountain stands over everything, and because the wing is moving slowly you have time to actually look. Flights are weather dependent and confirmed on the day. For first-time flyers, the tandem format keeps things simple: the pilot handles the technical side while you concentrate on the experience and the view.
An Open Water qualification is required. Discover Scuba from age 10.
Adventure Diving, Two Oceans Aquarium
The aquarium’s own dive school puts certified divers into three of its exhibits: the ocean exhibit with the stingrays, the shark exhibit with the ragged-tooths, and the kelp forest. All of it happens indoors, inside the aquarium building.
An Open Water qualification or better is required, and a refresher is compulsory if you have not been in the water in six months. Anyone without a card can do the Discover Scuba course instead, which takes three hours and finishes with a dive in the ocean exhibit the same day.
Drivers from 16. Passengers from 10 with a parent or guardian.
Guided Jet Ski Tour, Jet Ski Cape Town
You ride your own Yamaha WaveRunner, but a registered skipper rides out with the group, which is what makes it workable for someone who has never been on one. Wetsuit, life jacket, fuel and safety gear are included, and they hand out waterproof phone bags. Rides are thirty minutes or an hour out of Hout Bay harbour, daily.
The age split is the thing to settle before promising anything. Drivers start at sixteen under skipper supervision, while anyone from ten can ride as a passenger with a parent or guardian. They also stand the boats down when the wind goes over twenty five knots or the swell over two metres, so a strong southeaster can take the afternoon away.
Days out on the peninsula
Four guided days built around the Cape Peninsula itself. They vary a great deal in how hard they are, from a pedal-assisted coast road to an unlit cave with a tight entrance, but all four put a teenager outdoors for most of a morning or a day.
From age 16, and at least 1.6 m tall.
Guided E-Bike Tours, Ebike Cape Town
Guided tours on Giant pedal-assist e-bikes, on four routes: the city bowl and Atlantic seaboard, the Chapman’s Peak coast, the Constantia green belt and the Stellenbosch winelands. Pedal assist is what lets a group of mixed fitness ride the same route at the same pace, which is usually the reason a family ride falls apart.
The limits here are firm and worth checking against your teenager rather than assuming. Riders must be sixteen or older, at least 1.6 metres tall and no heavier than 105 kg, and they need enough cycling confidence to start and stop without being seated. The city and Chapman’s Peak routes run about four hours, Constantia about three.
From age 12 on the beach ride.
Noordhoek Beach Ride, Imhoff Equestrian Centre
The ride leaves the stables at Imhoff Farm, crosses the wetlands behind the dunes and comes out onto the long open sand of Noordhoek Beach. Ninety minutes at walking pace, in groups of no more than five. It is not a lesson and it is not a canter along the surf, it is a long quiet look at one of the best beaches in the country from the only vantage point that suits it.
Riders of all levels are taken, and the walking pace is what makes that possible. The beach ride itself has a minimum age of twelve. Children of eleven and under are not on it, but the stables run a separate fifteen-minute pony ride for them, which has to be arranged in advance so that a pony and a leader are there. The two are different products rather than versions of the same one, and it is worth knowing which you have booked.
No stated age limit. Nothing in the caves is lit.
Kalk Bay Caves, Caving Kalk Bay
Che Roberts guides this one and it starts at Kalk Bay station. It is about an hour of climbing to the first cave, then Boomslang, which he describes as easy enough for anyone, and then Robin Hood, which has a tight entrance and is not for everybody. There are hammocks for anyone who would rather sit that part out.
Nothing in these caves is lit. The day also takes in the views over the harbour, Fish Hoek and Simon’s Town, lunch on the route, and a tidal pool afterwards if you want it.
Drivers from age 10, and from about 1.3 m tall.
Scootours Table Mountain
A gravity scooter is a heavy-framed thing with fat tyres, proper brakes and no engine, and the point of it is that the mountain does the work. You are fitted with a helmet and gloves, briefed, and then you ride down, which on Table Mountain means a long descent with the city arranging itself underneath you the whole way. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours from briefing to finish.
It asks less of you than it looks like it does. Anyone who can ride and balance a bicycle can drive a scooter, and the guided pace means you are not racing anything. The useful part for a group is that children from four to nine can come along as passengers with an adult rather than driving their own, so the age floor for joining the ride is considerably lower than the age floor for riding solo. Tours run Tuesday to Sunday.
Out of the city
The last three need a drive and a booking made in advance, though none of them is more than about an hour out. One lifts off at sunrise and flies only when the air is still, so it is the entry most likely to move to another morning.
From age 10 on the one hour tour, 12 on the two hour.
Segway Vineyard Tours at Spier
Thirty minutes of training before anything else, then a guided ride out through the vineyard blocks at Spier with the Stellenbosch mountains around you. The short tour runs forty minutes on the vines, the longer one ninety.
Riders who cannot complete the training do not go out, which tells you the training is real rather than a formality. No children under ten on the one hour tour and none under twelve on the two hour tour, with a maximum rider weight of 120 kg.
From about age 10. A sunrise flight, and only when the air is still.
Hot Air Ballooning
Ballooning is the quietest way to see the Cape. There is no engine and no sense of speed, only the burner overhead and the Winelands moving slowly underneath, with vineyards and farmland coming up out of the half light and Table Mountain often visible in the distance.
Flights go at sunrise and at no other time, so the morning starts in the dark and the meeting time shifts through the year with the sun. About an hour is spent in the air. Balloons drift with the wind rather than steering, so no two flights follow the same line over the valley. Calm air is the whole requirement, which is why reschedules are common and flexible dates help.
Parental consent under 18. Jumpers are weighed on arrival.
Tandem Skydive, Skydive Cape Town
A short ground briefing, then a tandem jump from ten or twelve thousand feet: thirty five to forty five seconds of freefall, followed by about five minutes under parachute. The drop zone is on the R27 West Coast road, roughly fifty minutes north of central Cape Town.
Two things are decided before the day rather than on it. Parental consent is required for anyone under eighteen, and jumpers are weighed on arrival against a limit of 90 kg for women and 100 kg for men. Settle both before you drive out, because neither is negotiable at the drop zone.
Planning around a teenager
Almost everything here has to be booked, and several go only when conditions allow. Paragliding is confirmed on the day, the jet skis stand down above twenty five knots or two metres of swell, the balloon flies only in still air, and the skydive weighs you on arrival. Hold a second option for the same day rather than a second attempt at the same activity.
The other thing worth saying is that the age floors are not a ranking of how frightening something is. A ten-year-old can ride a gravity scooter down Table Mountain; a fifteen-year-old cannot drive a jet ski out of Hout Bay. The limits follow the equipment and the operator, not the adrenaline, which is why guessing at them rarely works.