Cape Point: Fynbos, Shipwrecks and the Making of a Maritime Headland

At the end of the Cape Peninsula, some 60 kilometres south of central Cape Town, a ridge of sandstone runs out into the sea and stops in a sheer drop of cliffs and spray. Cape Point in South Africa is not the southern tip of Africa, and it is not quite the place where two oceans meet, but for five centuries it has been one of the most closely watched headlands in the world: the corner that ships bound between Europe and Asia had to round, and the place where many of them came to grief. Around it lies one of the richest plant landscapes on earth. On the second day of our Southern Africa Tour, a local guide takes the group through the Cape of Good Hope section of Table Mountain National Park to the point itself.

The geography of the Cape Peninsula

The Cape Peninsula is a narrow spine of mountains, about 30 kilometres from north to south, that hangs off the south-western corner of Africa. Table Mountain sits at its northern end above the city; the southern fifth is the Cape of Good Hope section of Table Mountain National Park, a low, windswept plateau of heath and rock that falls away to the sea on three sides. The rock throughout is Table Mountain sandstone, a hard, pale quartzite that resists erosion and breaks into the cliffs, ledges and boulders that give the coast its shape.

Two capes sit at the tip, a little over two kilometres apart. The Cape of Good Hope, on the western side, is the most south-westerly point of the African continent, marked by a well-photographed signboard above a rocky beach. Cape Point is the promontory on the eastern corner, a high ridge with two summits that ends in cliffs dropping straight into the sea. Between and around them run currents, swells and reefs that sailors learned to fear.

What is the difference between Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope?

They are two separate headlands about 2.3 kilometres apart, at the same southern tip of the peninsula. The Cape of Good Hope is the low, rocky south-western corner of the continent; Cape Point is the high ridge to its east, where the lighthouses stand. Neither is the southernmost point of Africa, which is Cape Agulhas, roughly 150 kilometres to the east-south-east. A walking path joins the two, and both lie within the same national park.

Is Cape Point where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet?

Not officially, and not in any way you can see from the cliffs. The International Hydrographic Organization places the boundary between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans at Cape Agulhas, and South Africa’s Navy Hydrographic Office accepts that line. What people are really describing is the meeting of two currents: the cold Benguela Current flowing north up the west coast and the warm Agulhas Current flowing south down the east. Where their waters meet shifts with the wind and the season, usually somewhere along the coast between Cape Agulhas and Cape Point, and there is no visible line on the water. What you can see from the point is the contrast between the two sides: the cold, kelp-fringed Atlantic shore to the west and the warmer, sheltered waters of False Bay to the east.

The Cape of Storms: navigation and naming

The first Europeans known to have rounded this corner were the crews of the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias. In early 1488 storms carried his ships south out of sight of land, and when they turned north they found the coast running east: they had passed the end of the continent without seeing it. Dias sailed on as far as the coast beyond Mossel Bay before his crew insisted on turning back, and it was on the return voyage, in May 1488, that he first saw the great headland. He called it the Cape of Storms. King John II of Portugal, alert to what it promised for a sea route to India, renamed it the Cape of Good Hope. Vasco da Gama proved him right, rounding the Cape in November 1497 on the voyage that reached India the following year.

For the next four centuries the Cape was a waypoint every long-haul sailing ship had to pass. Ships coming from Europe had to round it in the right conditions; those returning from Asia, heavy with cargo and often short of crew, had to find it at the end of a long ocean crossing. Sir Francis Drake, passing in 1580, called it the fairest cape in all the circumference of the earth. The Dutch East India Company chose Table Bay, just north of the peninsula, for its supply station in 1652, and our article on the Castle of Good Hope follows how that station became Cape Town.

On the slopes near the point stand two tall white crosses, memorials to Dias and Da Gama that double as navigation beacons. Seen in line from the sea, they mark the bearing of Whittle Rock, a submerged reef in False Bay. It is a fitting tribute to two navigators: a monument that still helps ships find their way past the Cape.

Lighthouses and shipwrecks

The first lighthouse at Cape Point was lit in 1860, a cast-iron tower on the summit of the ridge, well over 200 metres above the sea. The height looked like an advantage and turned out to be a flaw. The light could be seen too far out, tempting ships to steer for it before they were safely clear, and the summit was often wrapped in cloud and fog, hiding the light exactly when it was most needed.

The problem became impossible to ignore on the night of 18 April 1911, when the Portuguese liner Lusitania, sailing from Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) with several hundred passengers and crew, struck Bellows Rock in fog just south of the point. Most of those aboard were saved, but eight people died when a lifeboat capsized. The response was a new lighthouse, completed in 1919 on a ledge much lower down the cliff, at about 87 metres above sea level. It is the most powerful light on the South African coast. The old tower still stands on the summit, now a viewpoint with a signpost listing the distances to cities around the world.

The Lusitania was only one of many. Twenty-six shipwrecks are recorded around Cape Point, and the reserve’s coast is scattered with their traces, from Dutch East Indiamen of the eighteenth century to fishing trawlers of the twentieth. On the western shore at Olifantsbos, the rusting remains of the Thomas T. Tucker, an American Liberty ship wrecked there in 1942, still lie on the rocks. The legend of the Flying Dutchman grew from this coast too: a Dutch captain who refused to turn back from a storm off the Cape and was condemned to sail on for ever, a ghost ship that sailors dreaded to sight. It inspired Wagner’s opera, and the Cape Point funicular is named after it.

Fynbos and the Cape Floral Region

The headland is only half the reason to come. The low, grey-green heath that covers the reserve is fynbos, from the Dutch for fine-leaved bush, and it belongs to the Cape Floral Region, the smallest and richest of the world’s six floral kingdoms. The region covers less than half a per cent of Africa’s land area but holds close to a fifth of the continent’s plants, about 9,000 species, roughly 69 per cent of them found nowhere else. UNESCO inscribed its protected areas as a World Heritage Site in 2004, and Table Mountain National Park, the Cape of Good Hope section included, is among them.

The Cape Peninsula alone carries around 2,285 plant species, about 90 of them endemic to the peninsula, on a strip of land smaller than many cities. Three plant families define fynbos: the proteas, with their large, cup-shaped flower heads, among them the king protea that is South Africa’s national flower; the ericas, or heaths, with their tiny tubular bells; and the restios, tough reed-like plants that give the landscape its tawny, rushy texture. Bulbs such as irises, orchids and lilies flower between them.

All of this grows on some of the poorest soils anywhere. Sandstone weathers into acidic, nutrient-starved sand, and fynbos has adapted to it with small, tough leaves that lose little water and need little feeding. It has also adapted to fire. Many fynbos plants need a burn every decade or two to release their seeds or trigger flowering, and some depend on ants to carry their seeds underground, out of reach of the flames. Protection here does not mean keeping the landscape untouched; it means managing fire carefully and holding back invasive trees such as pines and Australian acacias, which UNESCO identifies, with fire itself, as the greatest threats to the region.

Will we see wildlife at Cape Point?

Possibly, but nothing can be promised. The Cape of Good Hope section is the only fenced part of the national park, and it supports eland, red hartebeest, bontebok and Cape mountain zebra, though they range widely across open heath and may be far from the road. Ostriches are often seen near the coastal road, and chacma baboons, the most southerly primates in the world, forage along the shore. Keep food out of sight and never feed baboons: they quickly learn to take it, and habituated baboons can become dangerous. Between roughly June and October, southern right whales sometimes come into False Bay, and seabirds wheel around the cliffs throughout the year.

How much walking is involved at Cape Point?

A moderate amount, and some of it uphill. From the car park, a steep paved path climbs through the fynbos towards the old lighthouse, with a final flight of steps to the viewpoint at the top. The Flying Dutchman funicular covers most of that climb, rising 87 metres in about three minutes and leaving the last steps on foot; whether the group rides it on the day will be confirmed by your Tour Leader, and the funicular is occasionally closed for maintenance, when a shuttle runs instead. The cliff-top path down towards the newer lighthouse is narrow and exposed and best left in poor weather. The tour is rated Level 2 (Moderate), which means managing three to five hours of activity a day, at times on uneven ground. The point is often windy, so a warm, windproof layer is worth carrying even on a sunny day.

Cape Point on the Cape Town leg of the route

The Cape Point visit fills the morning of Day 2, with the local guide setting the reserve’s fynbos, birdlife, antelope and shipwrecks in context, followed by lunch at the Seaforth Restaurant. The afternoon moves inland to the Constantia valley, where the Cape’s first great wine estate was granted in 1685; our article on the Constantia wine route explains how the farms that fed the Company’s ships grew into the vineyards there today. The next morning the group is in the city centre at the Castle of Good Hope, before the cable car rises to the top of Table Mountain.

Seen together, the three stops make a clear sequence: the dangerous headland that every ship had to round, the farms that supplied the ships, and the fort that guarded them. Our overview of the Southern Africa cultural journey shows how that maritime beginning connects with the rest of the route, through the Klein Karoo and Johannesburg to the rivers and parks of the interior. For a broader introduction to the region, see our guide to exploring Southern Africa.

Standing by the old lighthouse, with the Atlantic on one side, False Bay on the other and the wind coming in hard off the sea, it is easy to see why the first sailors to round this corner called it the Cape of Storms, and why the name that stuck was the hopeful one. It is a good place to begin a journey through Southern Africa.