The Atlantic Seaboard is Cape Town at its most glamorous, a string of beaches and cliffside suburbs pressed between the cold blue ocean and the jagged ridge of the Twelve Apostles, the chain of buttresses that runs south from Table Mountain. Camps Bay anchors the strip with a wide curve of white sand backed by palm trees, while just to the north the four sheltered coves of Clifton — separated by granite boulders and reached down long flights of steps — offer the most fashionable and wind-protected sand in the city.
The suburbs tumble down the mountainside in tiers of villas and apartment blocks, and Camps Bay's beachfront Victoria Road is the place to be seen — a row of cocktail bars, sushi spots and steakhouses that fills with a tanned, moneyed crowd at sunset. The water is bracingly cold everywhere along here, fed by the Benguela current, so most visitors come to sunbathe, drink and watch the sun drop into the sea rather than to swim.
This is the most expensive real estate in South Africa, and it shows. Come for the scenery and the sundowners, for the cliffside drive along Victoria Road, and for the start of the spectacular coastal route that continues south past Llandudno toward Hout Bay. The granite dome of Lion's Head rises directly behind, its spiralling path one of the city's favourite sunset hikes.