Another Good Reason to Visit Cape Town

Table Mountain

Cape Town’s icon, Table Mountain, stands with her base firmly within the Table Mountain National Park, 1 086 metres above Table Bay. The impos­ing table top, more often than not draped in rich cloud that seems never to quite tumble from its sides, is a national monu­ment and her shape has been adop­ted as a ubi­quit­ous scribble for many a com­pany logo of those work­ing within her shadow.

The moun­tain is sculp­ted from sand­stone and her sum­mit meas­ures nearly 3km from end to end. Views from up here are remark­able and the pan­or­ama stretches from Table Bay to False Bay around the moun­tain to Hout Bay and Kommetjie.

When skies are clear, one can see right across the Cape Flats to the Hottentots Holland Mountains. No sur­prise then, that the cable way is the most pop­u­lar tour­ist des­tin­a­tion in Cape Town or that well over 16 mil­lion people have vis­ited her sum­mit since its open­ing in 1929. The cable way, which, weather per­mit­ting, allows one to reach the top of Table Mountain in minutes, rivals some of the best in the world. Recently upgraded in 1997, the new cars, or Rotairs, have revolving floors that give pas­sen­gers a 360-degree view over Cape Town and Table Mountain as they ascend and descend.

Table Mountain

There are about 350 paths to the sum­mit that range from undemand­ing to extremely dif­fi­cult and a net­work of over 550 walks on Table Mountain. The Hoerikwaggo Table Mountain Trail is a lux­ury 3-day, guided and portered, fully catered hike launched in December 2005. It incor­por­ates some of Cape Town’s major attrac­tions, such as the District Six Museum, Table Mountain’s sum­mit, two nights in the Table Mountain National Park and Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

Nowhere else in the world does an area of such rich bio-diversity exist almost entirely within one met­ro­pol­itan area as the Table Mountain National Park. It stretches from Signal Hill in the north to Cape Point in the south and includes the seas and coast­line of the pen­in­sula. Infact, Table Mountain National Park has more plant spe­cies than the British Isles.

Table Mountain is covered with a wide vari­ety of wild flowers and is the nat­ural home of the Silver Tree. She is flood­lit dur­ing spe­cific times of the year, includ­ing Christmas and New Year, and her impos­ing strength then looms over the city both night and day.

Useful Links:
See more des­tin­a­tion inform­a­tion at:
Table Mountain Photographs
Robben Island
South Africa Attractions
Cape Town Accommodation