Table Mountain National Park

Table Mountain is the flat-topped massif over Cape Town, a sheer wall of rock rising to about 1,086 meters that gives the city its horizon. The cableway is the easy way up. It has run since 1929, and the car floor rotates slowly as it climbs, so everyone gets the full 360-degree view over the bowl of the city and the sea. Up top the trails are flat and short, out to viewpoints over the harbor and the Twelve Apostles.

If you are hiking rather than riding, come prepared. Platteklip Gorge is the direct route up, a relentless staircase of a climb, and the mountain's rescue teams stay busy all season with people who underestimated it. The cable car is the easier and safer way to the top. Either way, bring a jacket. The summit sits in a different climate from the waterfront, often colder and much windier, and the southeaster drags a sheet of cloud, the 'tablecloth,' over the edge.

The mountain anchors Table Mountain National Park, which runs down the peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope, and its plateau carries fynbos found nowhere else. From up there you can hear the city keep time. The Noon Gun on Signal Hill has fired at exactly midday since 1806, first to set the ships' clocks in the harbor below, and the report still carries up the slope. The penguins at Boulders Beach are part of the same park, further south.