First Stop – Hout Bay

Hout Bay is described as “a seaside suburb of Cape Town” and although it is also referred to as a “resort town” it is not a prime tourist destination like the neighbouring town of Camps Bay.

We first visited Hout Bay 7 years ago. For the first few years we stayed at a guest suite/apartment overlooking the mountains; we loved the apartment and the views and we kept in touch with the owners, but there were challenges – a very steep, winding driveway and we couldn’t walk to the village making a car essential.

We knew we wanted to stay in Hout Bay, so we started to look at other options. Our friends, John and Margaret, have a home here and they introduced us to Hout Bay Manor. It is a boutique hotel built in 1871 so it has historic charm. It is in a quiet residential area, and is walking distance to the village and the beach. The staff are wonderful – we could not ask for anything more. This is our second year at Hout Bay Manor.

This year we are staying at Hout Bay Manor for 8 nights. You will see from the photos below, it is not busy which makes it even more relaxing.

We really like our proximity to the village where there are grocery stores (including our favour Woolworths), drug stores, banks, restaurants and many small local stores. We have been walking into the village in the mornings just to look around (and yes we bought a few things). We normally have lunch at an outdoor patio at one of the many restaurants in the village.

One shop that our friend Jan suggested is The T-Bag Designs workshop. Although it closed during the pandemic, they are now open again. The T-Bag Designs employs people from the local townships to create art from recycled teabags. The tea bags are dried, emptied, ironed then painted by the T-Bag Designs artists and turned into cards, gift bags, coasters, jewelry etc. – each one is unique. Their brochure states “This enterprise provides employment and stability for a group of previously disadvantaged people in the Hout Bay area.” We purchased a few pieces of jewelry to support these local artists.

Although a long way to travel, we find the food, wine and accommodations very reasonably priced and the quality is excellent. We love South African wines, and some of our favourite restaurants are in South Africa. Right now the Rand/CAD $ is ~14R to 1 CAD$. A 9 oz glass of a good quality wine is in the $4 – $6 range and a bottle is under $15. We can have a very nice lunch for under $30 and our seafood dinner tonight at CodFather in Camps Bay, with tip, was $85 (for 2 glasses of excellent white wine, King Clip, Scallops, Calamari, rice, fries, a salad and dessert). The seafood was amazing! This would be considered a “pricer” restaurant. Normally dinner is in the $40 – $60 range with two glasses of wine.

We thought closing with a sunset would be appropriate. We took these picture at Twelve Apostles last night. Although the hotel is very expensive, the Leopard Bar is a really nice, and a reasonable priced spot to have a “pub type” dinner. It is also one of our favourite places to watch the sunset.