News

Although Simons Town is a good 45 minutes drive from our collection of Camps Bay apartments, it will be worth the drive to experience life in a submarine in this floating museum. The Daphne Class Submarine SAS Assegaai-S99 is open for tours from 10:00 to 15:00 seven days a week during the summer months and can accommodate up to 10 visitors at a time.

Formerly the SAS Johanna van der Merwe and renamed in 1999 as the SAS Assegaai (meaning spear in Afrikaans) this submarine was one of the Daphne class submarines acquired from France during the early seventies and one of the first of its kind to serve in the South African Navy. The SAS Assegaai was decommissioned in 2003 and will be permanently preserved at the Naval Museum by 2013, so now is your chance to experience this submarine museum.

While the waters of Camps Bay are known for accommodating suntanned, gym honed bodies, the waters of Simonstown accommodate the South African Naval Base. If you have children staying with you at your accommodation in Camps Bay they may enjoy a day trip out to the suburb on the edge of False Bay to explore what it would be like to be a submariner and live and work under the waves rather than just swim in the Campsbay waters. The people who work on this floating museum are knowledgeable and keen to educate youngsters and adults alike on the inner workings of a submarine.

While your Camps Bay apartment may be very spacious, be prepared, especially if you are claustrophobic, as the submarine only measures 600cm wide, but 58 meters in length.

So give the turquoise waters and golden beaches of Kapstadt Camps Bay a break for one day and head out to Simonstown for an extensive tour of a once working submarine, it may be your only chance to experience life beneath the sea.

The center of Cape Town is located at the Northern end of the Cape Peninsula. Cape Town’s unofficial mascot, with its iconic plateau over 1000 meters high, Table Mountain, forms a dramatic backdrop to the city bowl. It is surrounded by the near vertical cliffs of Lions Head and Devils Peak on either side of it. Sometimes a thick strip of white cloud forms over the top of the mountain, this is referred to by the locals as the ‘tablecloth’.

Guests of our Camps Bay apartments should join local Capetonians in enjoying sundowners from Signal Hill, hiking Lions Head on a moonlit night and riding the cable car to the top of the mountain, amongst other recreational activity surrounding Table Mountain.

There are over 70 peaks above 300 meters high within Cape Town. The peninsula consists of a dramatic mountainous spine that juts southward into the Atlantic Ocean ending at Cape Point. Cape Point is said to be where the cold Atlantic Ocean and warm Indian Ocean meet. Many of Cape Town’s suburbs are located on the Cape Flats, this is the section of land which joins the peninsula to the mainland. The Cape Flats are situated on what is known as a rising marine plain, it consists of mainly sandy geology that gives evidence to the fact that at some point in time, Cape Town was an island.

When seeking luxury accommodation, Camps Bay is an excellent place to begin your search. For one reason, many of the Campsbay apartments that we offer are located on the slopes of the 12 Apostle Mountain range and usually overlook the Atlantic sea.  We have a large selection of accommodation in Camps Bay to suit every taste, they range from small trendy bachelor apartments to many a large lavish Camps Bay apartment.  All are designed to allow guests to appreciate the gorgeous surrounding mountain and sea views that Kapstadt Camps Bay is known for. Whatever your taste or budget we are bound to have the best accommodation Camps Bay Cape Town has to offer.

Cape Town is a wonderful city in which to stay when celebrating New Years Eve, if you are planning to stay in one of our Camps bay apartments at the end of the year, be sure to see the Cape Minstrel Carnival. The Cape Minstrel Carnival is the largest street festival in the Cape and is a tradition that has been practiced since the days of the Cape Colony, during the slave trade.

The Cape Minstrel Carnival is also known as Tweede Nuwe Jaar, which translates as second New Year. It was originally celebrated on the 2nd of January, the single day of the year where slaves were allowed off work. Today it is celebrated on the 1st of January.

The carnival is said to have originated in the Mother City when local slaves were influenced by a group of African American musicians who docked into the harbor in the 1880’s and entertained sailors with their performances.

If you do take a break from the beaches near your accommodation in Camps Bay to see the carnival, you will be entertained by performers from local communities, dressed as minstrels and sporting parasols and occasionally small instruments. They often have their faces painted and every group is dressed in the same uniform of brightly coloured material and sequence. These groups will dance and sing songs, some that date back 200 years and some that are renditions of contemporary pop songs.

Since the Cape Minstrel Carnival does take place the day after New Years Eve, it may be tempting to nurse your hangover in the quiet luxury of your Camps Bay apartment but you will be missing out on an atmosphere that can’t be described as minstrel groups compete for prizes for the best dressed, most flamboyant performance, best singer and best band. If you do choose to stay at home in one of our Campsbay apartments, you will be missing out on Cape Towns version of the Mardi Gra. If you select to spend the 1st of January on the Camps Bay beach, be warned, you will be sharing the waves and white sand with the masses, as this is traditionally a day to go to the beach, especially Camps bay beach. If you are staying in one of our Accommodation Camps Bay Cape Town that has a pool, enjoy. Otherwise delight in the white sand beaches and turquoise seas of Kapstadt Camps Bay on every other day of the year