Cape Town for the first time: what to book, what to leave loose

Cape Town punishes rigid planning. The south-easter, known locally as the Cape Doctor, can shut the Table Mountain cable car for an entire day at almost no notice, and it blows hardest in exactly the summer months when most visitors arrive.

So the rule is: book restaurants firmly and views loosely. The Franschhoek valley kitchens and the best Cape Town tables need reserving weeks ahead. Table Mountain needs a clear morning, and you cannot know which morning that is until the night before.

In practice that means holding Table Mountain as a floating item across your first three or four days, and going up the first genuinely still morning you get. Go early: the queue at opening is a fraction of the midday queue, and the cloud that forms the tablecloth tends to build later.

Second, do the Cape Peninsula anti-clockwise. Coach tours run clockwise and reach Boulders Beach between eleven and one, so the boardwalks are shoulder-to-shoulder. Going the other way puts you at the penguins in the late afternoon with better light and a fraction of the crowd.

Third, allow more days than the guidebook suggests. Cape Point, the Winelands, Hermanus and the city itself are each a full day, and they are all within ninety minutes of the Waterfront. Four days is tight. Six is comfortable.

One safety note, since people always ask: normal urban caution applies, as it would in any large city. Do not walk the city centre late at night, do not leave anything visible in a parked car, and use a driver rather than street parking at night. Beyond that, the areas visitors spend time in are well policed.