Cape Town Activities
Unusual Things to Do in Cape Town
The standard Cape Town week more or less writes itself. Table Mountain, a beach on the Atlantic side, a day down the Peninsula, an afternoon in the winelands. It is a good week, and most visitors have some version of it.
This is a list of what that week leaves out. Nothing here is obscure for its own sake and nothing is a stunt. A decommissioned navy submarine you can walk through. A birding boat that runs forty nautical miles out to the trawler fleet. A glider with no engine. A set of unlit caves in the mountain above a fishing harbour. Each is a real operator running a real thing, and each is the kind of experience people end up talking about afterwards precisely because they had not expected to find it.
Twelve of them, grouped by the kind of surprise rather than ranked. Most sit inside the city or a short drive from it. Three need an hour in the car, and the entries say which.
Hiding in plain sight
Four things sitting inside the city or a short drive from it, none of which announces itself. A navy submarine on a hardstand at Simon’s Town, a throwing lane in a Salt River yard, unlit caves in the mountain above Kalk Bay harbour, and a 1950s sidecar on the coast road. You can pass all four in an ordinary week without knowing they are there.
A guided hour inside a decommissioned navy submarine.
Assegaai Submarine Tour
The SAS Assegaai spent its working life underwater and now sits on land at Cole Point, which means you can walk through a Cold War submarine without getting wet. It is a strange and specific hour. The interior has not been prettied up for visitors, so you move through it the way the crew did, sideways past machinery, ducking through bulkheads, in spaces built for equipment first and people second.
What lands hardest is the scale. Boats like this carried a crew for weeks at a time in a hull you can touch both sides of, and no amount of reading about submarine service prepares you for standing inside one. Tours are guided and run every twenty to thirty minutes, so there is rarely much waiting. There is a display area and a Garden of Remembrance alongside if you want longer than the hour the tour itself takes.
Coached indoor sessions, seven days a week.
Axe Throwing, Axe-O
The lanes sit under a roof at The Spice Yard in Salt River. Every session is coached from the first throw, and the format stretches from a pair to a corporate group without changing shape.
Sessions run seven days a week and take two hours. Because every one of them is coached, a group that has never thrown an axe and a group that has can be booked into the same format.
Most of a day underground. 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.
You ride in the sidecar. An accredited driver takes the handlebars.
Vintage Sidecar Tours, Cape Sidecar Adventures
What separates this from any other guided road tour is where you sit. An accredited driver takes the handlebars and you ride in the sidecar bucket or pillion behind, so the coast road arrives at eye level with nothing in front of you. A leather jacket, helmet, goggles and bandana are handed over before you leave.
Cape Sidecar Adventures has run restored CJ750 and Ural sidecars in Cape Town since 2004. Routes run two hours for the Atlantic Seaboard and city loops, three for the mini-Peninsula, four for a half day and eight for a full day in the Peninsula or the Winelands. Pick-up is from the depot, the V&A Waterfront or any City Bowl address. The bikes are open to the weather, so if rain looks likely the ride moves to another date or goes ahead with the wet-weather gear carried on board, decided the day before.
Out to sea, down a hill, and into the air
These four take you somewhere the standard itinerary does not go. Forty nautical miles offshore to where the albatrosses follow the trawlers. Down a steel rail on a toboggan. And into the air twice, once in an aircraft with no engine at all and once in one that can almost hover.
A birding trip, not a cruise. Twenty five to forty nautical miles offshore.
Pelagic Seabird Trip, Cape Town Pelagics
This is a birding trip rather than a cruise. Cape Town Pelagics runs fast boats out of Simon’s Town harbour and goes twenty five to forty nautical miles offshore to find the trawler fleet, because that is where the albatrosses and petrels are.
Trips are scheduled through the year on published dates, and groups can arrange their own outside those. The operator is non-profit and puts what it makes into seabird research and conservation.
South Africa’s first downhill toboggan track.
Cool Runnings Toboggan Park
A toboggan on a steel track, 1.25 kilometres of twists, turns and drops, and a brake lever you control yourself. That last part is the whole appeal. Nothing is deciding your speed for you, so the same track can be a gentle roll or a fast one depending entirely on how much you leave the lever alone, and two people on the same run can have completely different afternoons.
Africa’s first downhill tobogganing track, and still a straightforward proposition. A run takes a few minutes, which makes it the sort of thing you do several times rather than once. Riders need to be at least three, and three to seven year olds ride with an adult of fifteen or older, so the youngest are on the track rather than watching from a fence. It is outdoors and on a steel rail, so the track may close in wet weather.
Thirty minutes in a two-seat glider, with no engine after the tow.
Gliding Experience, Cape Gliding Club
Cape Gliding Club flies introductory trips in a two-seat glider from Worcester Airfield. A powered aircraft tows you up, releases you, and from that point there is no engine at all.
The roughly thirty minutes that follow are run as a first lesson rather than a joyride. A qualified instructor introduces the basic manoeuvres and hands you the controls under supervision. Worcester is a little over an hour from Cape Town, so this is a morning out rather than an afternoon stop.
A tandem flight in an aircraft that can fly unusually slowly.
Gyrocopter Flights
A gyrocopter sits between a light aircraft and a helicopter, and flies like neither. The rotor turns in the airflow rather than under power, which makes it steady in rough air and lets it fly unusually slowly.
Flights are tandem, from airfields north of the city, in thirty or sixty minute options. The slow speed is the point rather than a limitation: it is the difference between passing over a coastline and actually looking at it.
Covering ground differently
The last four are guided ways of moving through one piece of Cape Town: on foot through Salt River’s murals, down a white dune on a board, down Table Mountain on a gravity scooter, and through Spier’s vineyard blocks on a Segway. The place is the point; the method is what makes you see it.
A two hour walk through the murals with the non-profit behind them.
Salt River Street Art Walking Tour, Baz-Art
Baz-Art is the non-profit behind the murals that have covered Salt River and Woodstock over the past decade, and its own guides walk you through them. The tour runs about two hours and covers who painted what, why a particular wall was chosen, and what the area looked like before.
It leaves from the Salt River Arcade on Albert Road, with start slots every half hour through the day. The same organisation runs a separate city centre walk from the Company Garden.
Boards, helmets and instruction on the Atlantis Dunes.
Sandboarding at Atlantis Dunes
The Atlantis Dunes sit inside the Witzands Aquifer Nature Reserve, about an hour north of Cape Town, and they are large, white and genuinely steep. Boards, helmets and instruction come with the session.
You can ride standing up or lying down, and lying down is faster and easier, which is why most people end up doing both. Sessions run thirty minutes or an hour, and the walk back up is the part nobody mentions beforehand.
A gravity scooter down Table Mountain. No engine, no pedals.
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.
Thirty minutes of training, then a ride through the vineyard blocks.
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.
How to fit these in
Most of this list is half a day or less, which makes these the things to slot around the fixed points of a trip rather than instead of them. The submarine tour, the axe lanes and the street art walk are each short enough to sit beside something else on the same day.
Three need more planning than the rest. The pelagic trip runs to published dates and goes a long way offshore, so it is booked well ahead or not at all. The gliding is at Worcester Airfield, a little over an hour out. And the caves are most of a day, ending at a tidal pool if you want it.