Kalk Bay

Kalk Bay harbour, at the bottom of the ramp off Main Road. When the boats come in, snoek, yellowtail and hake are sold from crates on the quayside, cleaned while you wait for a small tip. Prices swing with the catch. Seals lie on the slipway a metre away — do not feed them, and watch your bag.

In the corrugated shed at the back of Kalk Bay harbour. Hake and chips around R95, calamari a bit more, communal tables, seagulls with intent. Usually open from late morning until about 8pm, closed in extreme weather. Bring cash to be safe. It is the single most-loved cheap meal on the peninsula and worth the queue.

Start at the Boyes Drive path above the village, climb Jacobs Ladder and follow the marked route into Echo Valley and the Amphitheatre, then through Boomslang Cave — a genuine 150-metre crawl-through needing a head torch. Three to four hours round trip, free, and not a route to attempt alone or in mist.

On the seaward side of Main Road roughly halfway between Kalk Bay and St James, reached by a footbridge over the railway. A rectangular rock pool refreshed by every high tide, free, no lifeguard, and the water sits around 18 degrees in February. Locals swim here year-round at 7am. Wooley's pool nearby is smaller and rougher.

The 300 metres of Main Road either side of the Olympia Café hold a dense run of antique, curio, book and vintage dealers — naval instruments, Cape furniture, 1950s crockery, and Kalk Bay Books at 124 for secondhand Africana. Most open around 9.30am and close by 5pm, and some shut on Mondays.

Built into the rocks beside Kalk Bay station platform, so close that spray hits the windows in a swell. Beers around R45, seafood mains R150 to R250, live music on some weekends, and its own tidal pool below the terrace. It is the only place in the village with reliable late trade on a Friday.

The train is the right way here. Metrorail's Southern Line runs from Cape Town station through Observatory and Muizenberg to Kalk Bay in roughly 50 minutes for about R15, and the last stretch from Muizenberg southward runs on the seawall with the bay a few metres away. Travel in daylight and in a busy carriage. Driving takes 40 minutes via the M3 and Ou Kaapse Weg or the M4 coast road, but Main Road gridlocks on summer weekends and parking is genuinely scarce after 10am — use the harbour lot or Boyes Drive. An e-hail from the airport is R450 to R600. In the village, walk everything.

Yes, if the village is your reason for coming. Day visitors see it between 11am and 4pm, at its most congested; staying gets you the boats landing at dawn, the tidal pool empty at 7am and the restaurants at their best on a weekday night. If you also want the city, the winelands and Camps Bay in the same short trip, the hour of driving each way will grind you down and you should base in town instead.

The harbour car park at the bottom of the ramp is the main option and it fills by mid-morning in summer; car guards expect R10 to R20. There is limited kerbside parking on Main Road with a strict flow of traffic behind you, and more space up on Boyes Drive with a steep walk down. On a January Sunday, take the train — the parking situation is the single biggest complaint visitors have.

Yes, from about July through November, when southern right whales come into False Bay to calve. Boyes Drive above the village is the best free vantage point on this coast — you look straight down onto the water and can often see whales a couple of hundred metres offshore. Bring binoculars. Hermanus gets the reputation, but the Boyes Drive sightings are frequently just as good and far less crowded.

Warmer than the Atlantic side, yes. False Bay reaches 18 to 20 degrees in February and stays around 14 to 16 in winter. There is no real swimming beach in the village itself — you swim in the tidal pools at Dalebrook and Wooley's, or at the Brass Bell pool, none of which have lifeguards. For sand and surf, St James is a ten-minute walk and Muizenberg fifteen minutes by train.