Atlantic Seaboard
Sea Point to Hout Bay. Cold water, warm rock, and the coast road that most people remember longest.
Guides to this part of the city
What to see
Prestwich Memorial
The Prestwich Memorial on Somerset Road holds the remains of people exhumed from an unmarked burial ground a few streets away, uncovered…
Green Point Lighthouse
Green Point Lighthouse is the red-and-white banded tower standing on the shoreline at Mouille Point, first lit in 1824 and still in…
Clifton Beaches
Clifton is a sequence of four small Atlantic coves, known as 1st to 4th Beach, separated by granite boulders and backed by…
Victoria Road Atlantic Seaboard Drive
Victoria Road runs south from Camps Bay to Hout Bay with the Atlantic on one side and Table Mountain's western wall on…
Llandudno Beach
Llandudno Beach is a single curve of sand at the head of a granite cove, closed in by enormous boulders at both…
Camps Bay Beach
Camps Bay Beach is Cape Town's most accessible big Atlantic beach: one long, open sweep of pale sand with the Twelve Apostles…
Twelve Apostles
The Twelve Apostles are the chain of peaks and buttresses forming Table Mountain's western wall, rising above the Atlantic Seaboard between Camps…
Hout Bay Harbour
Hout Bay Harbour is Cape Town's busiest working fishing harbour, set beneath the Sentinel at the western end of Hout Bay. Fishing…
Walking from the coast
The Pipe Track
The Pipe Track is the path built to service the water pipeline running below the Twelve Apostles, and SANParks measures it as…
Tranquility Cracks via Corridor Ravine
Tranquility Cracks is a hidden maze of deep sandstone fissures high on the Twelve Apostles section of Table Mountain, filled with cool…
Corridor Ravine
Corridor Ravine is a hidden gem on Table Mountain's western slopes, ascending from the Pipe Track above Camps Bay into a lush,…
Kasteelspoort Trail to Diving Board
Kasteelspoort is one of the most popular routes up Table Mountain, famed for the iconic Diving Board — a dramatic overhanging ledge…
Chapman’s Peak Summit
A moderate but steep hike to one of Cape Town’s most iconic viewpoints, above the famous Chapman’s Peak Drive. Around 5 km…
Things to do
Seals at Duiker Island
Short boat cruises from Hout Bay harbour around Duiker Island, home to thousands of Cape fur seals. Boats circle the island and…
Scuba Diving
Try dives and guided dives from centres at the V&A Waterfront, Simon’s Town and Gordon’s Bay. A try dive runs theory, a…
Snorkelling
Guided snorkelling in the kelp forests of False Bay and the Atlantic seaboard. Wetsuit, mask, snorkel and fins are supplied, no certification…
Freediving
Freediving courses and try sessions in Cape Town. The entry-level course runs two days across theory, pool and open water, with a…
More about this area
Everything else in Atlantic Seaboard
Snorkelling
Cape Town snorkelling is a kelp forest, not a coral reef. You swim through the stipes with the light coming down in shafts, and the interest is in the small things: nudibranchs, urchins, klipfish, octopus, shysharks on the sand. The water is cold. Guided sessions put you in a thick wetsuit with a hood, and […]
Scuba Diving
A try dive is the standard way in: a short theory session, a pool dive to get used to breathing underwater, and then, if you want it, a dive in the sea. It is an experience rather than a qualification, and no experience is needed to start. Cape Town has two very different dive coasts. […]
Freediving
Freediving is diving on one breath. The entry-level course runs over two days and is mostly about slowing everything down: breathing, equalising, moving, and learning what your body actually does when you stop breathing. The structure is consistent. Theory first, then a confined-water session in a pool, then open water. Cape Town schools use the […]
Surfing
Surfers Corner at Muizenberg is where most people in Cape Town first stand up on a board. The wave is a long, slow, sandy-bottomed beach break that reforms all the way to the beach, which is close to ideal for learning. Lessons are run from shopfronts on the Muizenberg beachfront, a few minutes’ walk from […]
Stand-Up Paddleboarding
The canals inside the V&A Waterfront are the easy way to start: flat, sheltered, and short enough that an hour is plenty. You paddle past the working harbour and under the bridges with the city on both sides. Open-ocean sessions are the other end of it, run as guided tours along the coast when the […]
Helicopter Rides
The helipad sits on East Pier Road at the Waterfront, so the flight starts where you already are rather than at an airfield out of town. Flights are sold as routes rather than as blocks of time, running from a short circuit over Table Bay and the city to longer loops down the Atlantic seaboard, […]
Robben Island Museum Tour
The tour is the only way to visit Robben Island. It is run by Robben Island Museum and begins at the Nelson Mandela Gateway at the V&A Waterfront, where the ferry departs. The museum gives the whole experience as about three and a half hours, including the ferry crossing in each direction. The island section […]
The Gym Hout Bay
The Gym Hout Bay sits on Main Road as you come into the valley, and it works as three things at once: a CrossFit box, a Hyrox training venue and an ordinary gym floor you can use without a coach standing over you. There is a recovery area alongside the training space. Visitors are catered […]
The Spa at The Twelve Apostles
The Twelve Apostles stands alone on Victoria Road, with the mountain behind it and nothing but the Atlantic in front, and the spa makes the most of the position. There are seven treatment rooms, a tranquillity lounge, a Rasul chamber, plunge pools and a hydrotherapy pool, and treatment gazebos set out on the mountainside for […]
Metropolitan Golf Club
The layout is unusual and worth understanding before you book. There are nine fairways and fourteen greens, played off separate tees to produce a full eighteen-hole card, and the club prices both nine and eighteen-hole rounds. In its own words the course belies its nine-hole status and plays very much like an eighteen-hole layout. There […]