CAPE TOWN’S DOUBLE DELIGHTS

One morning in January, the height of summer in South Africa, I took a walk on Table Mountain. The group I was with included a bearded historian from the University of Cape Town, a businessman and his wife, a lawyer, and an attractive female architect who also edits an Interview-like magazine called ADA. They all make a habit of getting up early every Sunday and hiking one of the innumerable slopes above their city.

Because Cape Town is spread across a 30-mile-long peninsula, where a mountainous ridge runs down its middle like a curvaceous geological vertebrae, the choice of climbs (as well as the views you get from them) is virtually endless. Starting at the Sphinx-like Signal Hill and Lion’s Head that overlook the city center, the vertebrae spread out to Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak, carry on down the vast Twelve Apostles and the precipitous Chapman’s Peak, curve into the recesses of Silvermine and Red Hill, and end at Cape Point, where the land falls away into the tempestuous sea at the southern tip of Africa.

I don’t hike much in the U.S., but in Cape Town you can hardly avoid it--nor do you want to. Like Los Angeles, the city literally smacks of good health and exercise. Paragliders leap off Lion’s Head to land between the bathers on the beach at Camps Bay, cyclists whiz along the road that’s etched into the hillside above the Atlantic seaboard, every car seems to have a surfboard attached to it, and people glow with sunny health. Even the restaurant menus have a proclivity toward fresh fish and hearty salads. In no city I’ve ever visited, not even L.A., is the air of well-being and relaxation so pervasive.

And what better place to share in this spirit than on Table Mountain, which is in the midst of everything. One of the most unmistakable mounds of earth on Earth, the 3,000-foot-high mesa-like landmark guards Cape Town as much as it divides it, keeping fog to one side when there’s sun on the other, holding wind from rain, and separating two worlds: Table Bay and False Bay. So geologically fractious is it that Capetonians give directions accordingly: A place is either in front of the mountain or behind it.

On this particular Sunday morning, though, i was going onto the mountain itself, and by the looks of it so were plenty of other people. By the time I reached the narrow road that bisects the flattop like a thin layer of icing in a cake, there were long lines for the cable car, the easier way up, while small groups of hikers were limbering up for the ascent by foot. One of those groups was mine.

The magazine editor, Jenny Sorrell, was our leader, and she set an easy pace up the steep climb. We stopped frequently to catch our breath, only to lose it all over again while sighing at the views below us.

The coastline of Table Bay stretches in a long crescent, beginning at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront and the main harbor and then going around to the surfer and windsurfer beach of choice, Bloubergstrand, otherwise known as Big Bay. On the other side of Lion’s Head and Signal Hill, which make up the rest of the mountainous amphitheater overlooking the city, lies the Atlantic seaboard. From where we stood, we couldn’t see the so-called Riviera of Cape Town--Clifton, Camps Bay and Bantry Bay--but it is close enough for locals to designate it, too, as “the front of the mountain.”

In the middle of the bay is Robben Island, all green and flat on the sparkling sea. Looking at it then, from on high, it was hard to imagine that for nearly four centuries it had been used for exile. The most recent (and very last) of the people jailed there were political prisoners, punished for fighting apartheid. The most famous prisoner, Nelson Mandela, was freed in 1990. Four years later he became South Africa’s first democratically elected president.

On a previous visit to the country, several years after Mandela had ushered in a constitution said to be the most liberal in the world, two things struck me: the huge number of changes that democracy had wrought and the small number of tourists who were coming to see them.

The popular belief back then was that foreigners were waiting for a sign that the country was “safe.” Or would it become another African statistic? In the meantime, a land tailor-made for tourism--from the animal-rich game parks like Kruger, to the subtropical seaside city of Durban, to the snowy peaks of the Drakensberg--sat waiting. As for the gem in the crown, Cape Town, it seemed to be drawing more breathless comparisons than visitors: It Was San Diego With Mountains, Vancouver But Warm, The Next Sydney, San Francisco Without Bad Weather. For me it remained, quite simply, One of the World’s Best-Kept Secrets.

Until now.

After only a few days, I could tell that something exciting was afoot. It lingered in the air as unmistakably as the curried samosas being fried in the former Malay Quarter, now called Bo-Kaap (which means “above cape”); the suntan oil rising off the bodies on Clifton beach; and the myriad foreign accents on the streets. The city was finally being discovered.

Restaurants had multiplied, and they weren’t just the garden-variety pasta-and-pizza joints that you had found in the past. They were seafood places and serious kitchens manned by such chefs as Garth Stroebel of the Mount Nelson Hotel and Graeme Shapiro of The Restaurant, who were exploring the Cape’s spice-rich culinary history, which could be traced back to slaves brought from Malaysia in the 18th century. The V&A; Waterfront had doubled in size, but still managed to keep a wonderful balance between a working harbor and a place to find a superb meal and one of the world’s top hotels, the Cape Grace.

Best of all, people were getting out and staying out. This struck me the night before the hike, when I was sitting at a small cafe called the Daily Deli under Lion’s Head. The last time I’d visited Cape Town, the deli had been a small mom-and-pop operation that closed at dusk. It still served coffee and pastries, but now it stayed open late and you could sit outside. At midnight, the place was still full of people seated outdoors, sipping cappuccinos.

The same scenario was playing out all over Cape Town, as if restaurants--from bistros on Adderley Street to the smallest cafe in Camps Bay--had suddenly caught on to the fact that the city is blessed with eight months of great weather a year. And judging by the proliferation of people eating and drinking alfresco, everyone was determined to get in on the action. Cape Town never looked so cosmopolitan.

Culturally, too, it was more vibrant than ever. Right before going to the deli, I’d been to a knockout show in Green Point that was worthy of any big-city boite, where two lip-synching transvestites mimicked every female artist from Helen Reddy to Donna Summer. When I told my fellow hikers about this, during one of our many orange breaks, they all recounted similar evenings.

One couple had gone to a performance of “Tosca” on the Spier wine estate in the nearby town of Stellenbosch. The academic and some friends had watched Second New Year, the annual Mardi Gras-like gathering of hundreds of Coloured (South Africa’s term for mixed-race) minstrels dressed in bright silk costumes who parade through Green Point. The lawyer’s family had picnicked at a jazz concert on the lawn of Kirstenbosch botanical gardens.

The only one of us who hadn’t ventured out--oddly enough, considering her status as a local celebrity--was Sorrell, who had gone to work. But, as she pointed out, that was pretty much like being at a party. Her office, it seems, overlooks Long Street, a downtown artery whose revitalization epitomizes what has happened in Cape Town. It once used to shut at 5, like the surrounding offices, but now things only start buzzing after 5.

“I can open my window and listen to live music,” Sorrell beamed, “and I can go out at 2 in the morning and still get an espresso.”

Sorrell was a good person to reacquaint me with Cape Town, a city I’d lived in during the last years of apartheid. She covers every scene from the latest in interior decorating to the hottest township music, publicizing it in her magazine and in a series of funky maps that she designs. As Cape Town has grown, so have the maps, which began with arts and crafts, then went on to food; the body, mind and spirit; the gay community; and places to get married.

When I browsed through the maps later, I noticed that most of the destinations are on Table Bay or the Atlantic seaboard--in “front” of the mountain. Those behind are in the suburbs: the wine region of Constantia or part of the stylish Claremont shopping belt. But False Bay? Despite being many times larger than its sister bay, it doesn’t have nearly the same number of restaurants, boutiques and trendy attractions. So it is left largely unmentioned.

But for me, its less-than-chic otherworldliness is part of False Bay’s charm. It is the yin to Table Bay’s yang, the day to its night, the Old World to its New. On Table Bay, the mood is vibrant, the cars are more likely to be BMW convertibles, models jostle for tables at the restaurants in Heritage Square, women bathe topless, and the rocks at Bakoven are the place to hang out at sunset. On False Bay, the mood is more rarefied, many of the streets are still cobbled, the cars are older and rustier, you can often hear whales snorting close to shore late at night, fresh fish get sold roadside, and the best place to see the sunrise is, well, anywhere.

The morning I drove to False Bay, fog covered the city. but as soon as I got behind the mountain, it disappeared and the weather was perfect. I skirted Kirstenbosch gardens and the vineyards of Constantia until the back of Table Mountain was behind me and Muizenberg, the gateway to the other side of Cape Town’s coastline, was in front.

When I got there, the sea was covered with dozens of wannabe surfers (this being the ideal place for beginners), who floated like a posse of lethargic black seals. A half-moon of beach stretched as far as the eye could see, and on the far side of the bay, some 30 miles away, loomed a formidable range of mountains. Its name, paradoxically, combines the original inhabitants of the Cape with the settlers who contributed to their extermination, the Hottentots Hollands.

Not many people remember it, but False Bay used to be the Table Bay of yesteryear, and the haute monde flocked there like they do to the other side of the mountain today. The most favored destination was Muizenberg--which is pronounced like a famous car of the time, the Duesenberg--and the reason was obvious. The water, being in a more protected bay and close to the Indian Ocean, wasn’t as turbulent or as cold as the Atlantic side. So vacationers caught the train from Cape Town to spend the weekend, and millionaires built mansions along the beachfront.

Cecil John Rhodes, the diamond magnate and creator of the famed scholarship, lived out his final years there; and an Italian prince, Natale Labia, tried to turn it into a little Venice. As if the landscape weren’t Italian enough (stone pines dot the hillsides and the Constantia vineyards are centuries old), he made it even more so. He built a pink palazzo, furnished it with Italian finery, and planned a series of canals in the neighborhood.

But somewhere along the way the millionaires moved on, the Labia villa became a museum, and Table Bay beaches--once deemed too cold for swimming--became hot. Today the Muizenberg mansions have been cut up into boarding houses, Nigerian immigrants sleep six to a room, and the old synagogue, though maintained, no longer has a congregation. This is partly why towns on the False Bay coast appear on most itineraries, if at all, as names to bypass on the road to Cape Point.

If only people knew what they were missing. Along the roughly 12 miles that stretch between Muizenberg and Simonstown, the final town on this coast, lies a series of village-like suburbs that, though they often blend into one another, have a distinct character. They also have plenty of characters: men covered in tattoos, old British-looking colonials walking along the seaside. It’s a mix of Venice (the one in California), Greece and Cornwall, England.

The names, especially, are British-sounding. Clovelly is so small you could miss it, while next door, Fish Hoek, with the largest beach and the most sheltered bay within the bigger bay, draws the most bathers and catamarans. In more affluent St. James, the tiny beach is backed by a clutch of colorful Victorian-era wooden changing rooms on stilts.

One of the last buildings I passed before leaving Muizenberg was a red-brick railway station on the sea. I’d heard it was modeled on one in Delft, Holland, perhaps by someone trying to re-create the Netherlands the same way Prince Labia tried to re-create Italy.

In the old days, the station was where vacationers used to alight before heading to one of the small hotels that were the resort’s stock in trade. People on holiday still catch the train today, although the thrill is not to get there but to depart from there on a seaside tour. The ride south to Simonstown is one of Cape Town’s little-publicized treats, not anywhere as popular as the cable car up Table Mountain, but this side’s equivalent for stunning views of the bay. The coaches run so close to the water you can almost stretch your hand out a window and touch the ocean.

I followed the road to Simonstown, making my first stop in the small fishing harbor of Kalk Bay. The boats had come in by late morning, trailed by a dozen seals waiting for tidbits of fish that might fall overboard. The air was filled with the voices of fishermen and the shrill calls of women waiting to buy the latest haul of snoek (pronounced “snook”), a local fish similar to barracuda.

Like Cape Town’s Malaysian Bo-Kaap district, Kalk Bay escaped one of the worst acts of apartheid: forced removals. In the 1960s and ‘70s, thousands of mixed-race families from across the city were moved en masse to Mitchells Plain, a sandy expanse between the two bays, in order to enforce the laws regulating where different races lived. But many of the fishermen of Kalk Bay weren’t uprooted. This has left the village with a spirit and flavor all its own.

Over the years others have found a haven here, too: potters, book dealers and surfers, as well as bric-a-brac stores piled high with secondhand goods. Since my last visit, the businesses had been polished up and several upscale shops selling art and good food had squeezed into the convivially congested main road, where second-floor balconies literally hang over the traffic--not unlike the look of Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

The contrast of the fishermen walking by the stylish entrances was stark, but, as always in Kalk Bay, it couldn’t have been more natural. So, too, was breakfast at the Olympia Cafe & Deli, an eatery opposite the harbor that is rough-and-ready but perfect. It’s only a matter of time, I thought, before it’s featured in one of Sorrell’s maps.

The route out of Kalk Bay hugged the coast, and it was hard to keep my eyes on the road, what with the views around each corner. There was a much more understated feel there than in front of the mountain, and for the first time I knew what it meant to say The Same But Different.

Homes are built up the hillsides as they are on the Atlantic side. But rather than being big, white and open to the sea, they are older and quirkier. The water is still a blue that makes you want to pull over and jump in--except there, with so much available parking and accessible beaches, it’s possible to do that almost anywhere. Seals and gannets are more likely than humans to be sunning themselves on the rocks. And rather than yachts cutting through the waves, Southern Right whales leap playfully out of the sea and fall onto their backs in a crash of spray.

As a haze settled over the bay, making the Hottentots Hollands disappear, it was easy to forget that False Bay was a bay at all. Sailors in the 16th century were similarly confused by the coastline. At that time, the Cape was used as a pit stop on the way to and from India, and boats on their way home to Europe thought they were passing Cape Point when they’d actually taken one corner too early. Sometimes they sailed as far into the bay as Muizenberg before they realized their mistake. The wrong turn occurred so often, it was immortalized in its “False” name.

Today’s mariners, ironically, are based in Simonstown, South Africa’s main naval town and the last major outpost before Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. When I got there, it was like driving into an English seaside resort, only one that has good weather, palm trees and an old mosque up one of the side streets. Buildings are whitewashed and have ornate grillwork on their balconies, sailors wear starched uniforms, and Jubilee Square is built around the statue of a famous navy dog called Just Nuisance.

Heading south again, near the end of Simonstown, I turned down a steep lane that leads to Boulders Beach. But the reason most people go here is not for the beach--although the still, clear water makes it wonderful for that, too--but to visit the colony of jackass penguins who have made it their home. Even before I got to the boulders, I found penguins huddled in the cool shade of bushes (although beware the smell that lingers on windless days). Others preened themselves on the rocks, occasionally interrupting their titivating to let out their donkey-like cry or waddle into the water between the human swimmers.

Later, as the road out of Simonstown climbed higher, the signs of human development trickled away, a signal that I was nearing the end of the geological vertebrae. Baboons stood patrol above Smitswinkel Bay in a sullen kind of way--they’d probably read the “Don’t Feed Baboons” signs--and then the road turned inland.

At Cape Point, the wind was blowing so hard that people’s shirts were ballooning out and caps were being gripped tightly. The southern tip of Africa is barely 90 minutes from Table Bay and the front of the mountain, but also a world away from it. Antelope and baboons crossed the raw, wind-swept nature reserve, while the ocean was full of waves and whitecaps, churned up by the meeting of the Benguela and Agulhas currents going up and coming down either side of the continent. It was breathtaking in a different way from the views I’d seen.

Since my last visit, a cute funicular had been installed to take people to the lighthouse at the highest point. But many chose to walk up the steep rise instead. This being Cape Town, and having already cut my chops on Table Mountain, so did I.

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GUIDEBOOK

Down to Cape Town

Telephone numbers and prices: The country code for South Africa is 27. The area code for Cape Town is 21. All prices are approximate and computed at a rate of 10 rand to one U.S. dollar. Room rates are for a double for one night. Meal prices are for two, food only.

Getting there: South African Airways flies nonstop from Atlanta to Cape Town, and also from New York via Johannesburg. KLM, British Airways and Lufthansa fly from Los Angeles International Airport to various cities in Europe, then connect with flights to Cape Town.

Where to stay: For world-class ambience, pampering and quality, the luxury Cape Grace Hotel, West Quay Road, Waterfront, Cape Town 8002; 410-7100, fax 419-7622, www.capegrace.com, is hard to beat, smack between a yacht harbor and a working harbor. Rates: $300 and up.

Upcale hotelier Liz McGrath’s Cellars-Hohenort, 93 Brommersvlei, Constantia 7800; 794-2137, fax 794-2149, www.cellars-hohenort.com, lies behind Table Mountain and has exquisite rooms in a historic mansion and in a newer building. Rates: $170 to $230.

An array of less-expensive but still top-class B&Bs; and small hotels can be found at www.portfoliocollection.com. One, Kalk Bay’s Inn at Castle Hill, 37 Gatesville Road, Kalk Bay, Western Cape 7975; 788-2554, fax 788-3843, is an Edwardian villa with five rooms. Rate: $50.

Where to eat: Seafood is a Cape Town specialty, and one of the best places for Cajun calamari is on the harbor at Panama Jacks, Quay 500, 447-3992, fax 447-5471. $20. The Restaurant, 51a Somerset Road, Green Point, 419-2921, is perennially listed as one of the country’s 10 best. $45. Also try the Mount Nelson Hotel’s Cape Colony dining room, 76 Orange St., 483-1000, fax 424-7472, www.orient-expresshotels.com/mountnelson, where the spices of the local Cape Malay cuisine predominate. $36.

There are also smaller eateries along False Bay. In Kalk Bay, Harbour House, Main Road, 788-4133, is known for its fish. $27. Olympia Cafe & Deli, 134 Main Road, 788-6396, offers fresh-baked goods and Mediterranean fare. $23.

What to see and do: Some add a visit to Cape Town to a South African safari at one of the country’s game parks. Prime season for such trips is generally in the lower hemisphere’s winter, May to September. But summer, October to April, is the high season for Cape Town.

The cable car to the top of Table Mountain costs $8 for adults, 424-0015, fax 424-3792, www.tablemountain.co.za. The three-hour tour of Robben Island and its museum, 411-1006, fax 411-1059, www.robben-island.org.za, is under $10, including the ferryboat trip.

A visit to Boulders Beach to see the penguins costs less than a dollar, as does the museum in the Labia palazzo, 192 Main Road, 788-4106. The Muizenberg train runs daily, 449-6181, www.capemetrorail.co.za.

For more information: Cape Town Tourism Board, P.O. Box 1403, Cape Town 8000, South Africa; 426-4267 or 426-4268, fax 426-4266, www.cape-town.org.

South African Tourism, 500 Fifth Ave., Suite 2040, New York, N.Y., 10110; (800) 822-5368 or (212) 730-2929, fax (212) 764-1980, www.southafrica.net.