Cape Town Lens: Cape Point & Cape Hope

A Cape Town Cape Point tagged image from photographer – féileacán as published on Flickr.

Cape Point & Cape Hope

Image by féileacán

Cape Point is a promontory at the southeast corner of the Cape Peninsula, which is a mountainous and scenic landform that runs north-south for about thirty kilometres at the extreme southwestern tip of the African continent in the Republic of South Africa. Table Mountain and the city of Cape Town are close to the northern extremity of the same peninsula. The cape is located at 34°21′26″S 18°29′51″ECoordinates: 34°21′26″S 18°29′51″E, about 2.3 kilometres (1.4 mi) east and a little north of the Cape of Good Hope on the southwest corner.[1] Although these two rocky and beautiful capes are very well known, neither cape is actually the southernmost point in Africa; that is Cape Agulhas, approximately 150 kilometres (90 mi) to the east-southeast.

The Cape of Good Hope (Afrikaans: die Kaap van Goeie Hoop, Dutch: About this sound Kaap de Goede Hoop (help·info), Portuguese: Cabo da Boa Esperança) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa. There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometres (90 mi) to the east-southeast. The Atlantic and Indian oceans meet at the point where the warm-water Agulhas current meets the cold water Benguela current and turns back on itself – a point that fluctuates between Cape Agulhas and Cape Point, about one kilometre east of the Cape of Good Hope.

When following the western side of the African coastline from the equator, however, the Cape of Good Hope marks the point where a ship begins to travel more eastward than southward. Thus the first rounding of the cape in 1488 by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias was a milestone in the attempts by the Portuguese to establish direct trade relations with the Far East. Dias called the cape Cabo das Tormentas. "Cape of Tempests" was the original name of the "Cape of Good Hope". [2]

As one of the great capes of the South Atlantic Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope has been of special significance to sailors for many years and is widely referred to by them simply as "the Cape."[3] It is a waypoint on the clipper route followed by clipper ships to the Far East and Australia, and still followed by several offshore yacht races.

The term Cape of Good Hope is also used in three other ways:

It is a section of the Table Mountain National Park, within which the cape of the same name, as well as Cape Point, falls. Prior to its incorporation into the national park this section constituted the Cape Point Nature Reserve;[4]
It was the name of the early Cape Colony established in 1652, in the vicinity of the Cape Peninsula.
Just prior to the formation of the Union of South Africa, the term referred to the entire region that in 1910 was to become the Cape of Good Hope Province (usually shortened to the Cape Province).