Cape Town is a great base from which to explore the stunning surrounds in the rest of the province. Whether you want to go on safari, visit the Cape Winelands, or just take in the amazing scenery the Western Cape has to offer, there’s plenty to see and experience no matter your interests. Here are our five favourite day trips from Cape Town.
Get hold of a City Pass for generous discounts on Cape Town’s top attractions, and rent a car for total freedom to take one of these amazing day trips!
The West Coast is made up of expansive beaches, fields of wildflowers, tiny fishing villages, and quaint historic towns. There is plenty to see and do, from the incredible fields of wildflowers along the Wildflower Route between August and October to a totally unplugged camping weekend in the mountainous region of the Cederberg. Darling offers craft beers and gourmet lunch food at the local Darling Brewery, while Atlantis is where you’ll find enormous dunes to sandboard down. Visit fishing towns like Paternoster or Saldanha Bay for a relaxing beach-side day trip, or tackle the many mountain biking trails that criss-cross the West Coast National Park. Stop over at Club Mykonos, where you can go jet-skiing or sailing, visit the restaurants and spa, and send the kids to enjoy a huge and colourful play area.
Distance: 1-6 hours, depending on where you go
Highlights: A real road-trip feel, wildflowers in spring, quiet beaches, family-friendly fun, local beer and wine
Stay over: Club Mykonos
The Karoo starts just an hour away from Cape Town and sprawls across the southern half of the country, so there are many options for great day trips in the area. It’s a semi-arid region, in stark contrast to the mountains and forests of the Cape. Here you’ll find quirky little towns connected by long, straight roads that stretch to the horizon over scrubland. Sheep graze on the stubs of grass, and small koppies (hills) rise now and then from the landscape. There’s the iconic Ronnies Sex Shop—the self-proclaimed “oddest pub in Africa” that was formerly just “Ronnie’s Shop” before it hilariously gained its fame after someone graffitied the adjective onto the signboard. Prince Albert is an artsy and historic little town tucked behind the majestic Swartberg pass, which makes a perfect escape from the city.
Distance: 1-6 hours, depending on where you go
Highlights: See the big five, explore historic towns, get in touch with the real, rugged side of South Africa
Stay over: Aquila Private Game Reserve
Cape Point has got to be one of the world’s most beautiful promontories, with its cliffs rising high above the waves that crash at its base. The scenery from here is truly magical, with endless views of the ocean. Seabirds nest in the cliffs high above turquoise waters, and tiny hidden beaches are tucked into private alcoves. You’ll spot the famous dassies (rock hyrax), along with other small animals, and can take the Cape Point The Flying Dutchman Funicular to the top lighthouse for panoramic views that look like something from a postcard. The Parks Shop sells unique locally-made fynbos body products.
On the way, you’ll travel along the False Bay Coast, a stretch of beach-side suburbs like Kalk Bay, where you’ll find innumerable bars and restaurants as well as little antique shops and art galleries. You’ll also pass Simon’s Town, where you can get up close to the African penguin colony at Boulders Beach and take a dip with the creatures. All of these neighborhoods make perfect day trips from Cape Town.
Distance: 1 hour from Cape Town
Highlights: See the penguins, stunning scenery, restaurants, beaches
Stay over: Cape of Good Hope cottages
One of Western Cape’s biggest attractions is its fine wine. There are plenty of day trips you could choose from, including the Stellenbosch Wine Route, Helderberg Wine Route, The Durbanville Wine Route, and the Constantia Wine Route, only 20 minutes from the city. Our favourite way to experience the Winelands is aboard the Franschhoek Wine Tram, which transports you between some of the Franschhoek area’s finest wine estates, and nobody has to get behind the wheel. You can even connect with it by taking the City Sightseeing bus from the V&A Waterfront.
Distance: 1 hour from Cape Town
Highlights: Wine, wine, wine!
Stay over: There are loads of B&B’s, lodges, and guest houses to stay at. Take your pick!
The Whale Route takes in some spectacular scenery and some really nice little towns, perfect for day trips. Of course, it’s best to go during whale season, between June and November. Hermanus is the go-to place to see whales, and they host an annual Whale Festival in peak season. The town has gorgeous beaches and many simple but tasty seafood restaurants. There’s a rich history showcased in lovely museums, along with nature reserves with spectacular walking trails overlooking the sea.
On the way, you’ll travel along the False Bay Coast, a stretch of beach-side suburbs like Kalk Bay, where you’ll find innumerable bars and restaurants as well as little antique shops and art galleries. You’ll also pass Simon’s Town, where you can get up close to the African penguin colony at Boulders Beach and take a dip with the creatures. All of these neighborhoods make perfect day trips from Cape Town.
On the way there, stop over at the southernmost point of Africa, Cape Agulhas, where there are beautiful coastal rockpools and a brilliant sea view.
Distance: 2 hours from Cape Town
Highlights: The southernmost tip of Africa, whale watching, seafood
Stay over: There are many options along the entire coast.
Planning a trip to Cape Town? Book flights, browse accommodation, and rent a car now to get the best rates. The Cape Town City Pass gives you access to over 70 of the top Cape Town attractions, tours, and things to see and do, including the popular hop on hop off City Sightseeing bus.
Cape Town Tourism is the Official Destination Marketing Organisation for the City of Cape Town.
Cape Town Tourism
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to