Thirty-four degrees of latitude south. Near-bottom tip of the African Continent. Further south, a maritime void that drops all the way to Antarctica. Ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope probably do so in an affectionate fashion, keeping land in sight, wary of open seas. Nearby, they know, the mighty Atlantic and Indian Oceans collide. This is a space that leads nowhere, that just doesn’t fit on known lines from A to B.
It would seem the southern tip of Africa has two faces, one purely geographic and the other popularly romantic. Technically, the actual southernmost point is located some 200 km to the southeast of Cape Town and called Cape Agulhas. An extension of Africa’s gigantic landmass, that cape is wide and rather boring looking—on a map at least.
But if like me, you are a dreamer and cherish fractured memories of the adventures of
Tintin et les cigares du Pharaon or those stories of the Flying Dutchman, you’ll ignore the previous coldly geographical truth and let yourself believe that in fact, the more famous Cape of Good Hope is as far south as one can venture in Africa without dropping off into the ocean.
Hanging from the bottom of the Cape Peninsula, the Cape of Good Hope is much sexier than
Cape Agulhas, Africa’s actual southern tip, to the east. Slender or even narrow, cliffy, dominated by a white lighthouse, inhabited by herds of antelopes and part of the Table Mountain National Park, the Cape is so close to Cape Town it can easily be visited in a half-day excursion.
The biodiversity on the Cape Peninsula is extraordinary, so much so that the Cape Floral Kingdom—one of six kingdoms worldwide to define geographical flower arrangements, so to speak—is the smallest but richest of all six. One big flower bouquet at the foot of Africa.
