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To me, travelling can sometimes seem like a series of love affairs. There are places, like old loves, that I keep returning to, warmed by familiarity and certain that my affection for them will soon be rekindled. Then there are others that I come upon for the first time that make me feel like a smitten adolescent.

It was like that with Cape Town. As I sat at the airport at the end of my first ever five day visit, I was filled with excitement at my new-found passion and already dreaming up ways of coming back.

At first it had been a purely physical thing. On my first morning, I wandered onto the balcony of my room at the Mount Nelson Hotel and looked up at the brick-red Table Mountain lit up by early winter sunshine. My eye was drawn next to the pointed Lion’s Head mountain, also overseeing the city, and I traced its mane into the rump of Signal Hill, completing a trio that help make Cape Town one of the most topographically beautiful places in the world. Then, as I made my way to breakfast, past the dusty-pink buildings of the Mount Nelson Hotel and through its immaculate gardens – where England meets Africa – I was beguiled by the sight and scent of what seemed like a million white roses.

So began an infatuation with Cape Town that did not wane for my whole trip. Granted, I did see the city at its best, presided over by gleaming blue winter skies and a fierce African sun, that brought unseasonably warm temperatures into the 30s, throughout my visit. True, I did spend my five nights there at three of the city’s most sumptuous hotels: the venerable old institution of the Mount Nelson, the glitzy Cape Grace at the heart of the Victoria and Albert waterfront and the excellent Twelve Apostles Hotel and Spa, a short drive down Cape Town’s Atlantic coast.

Yet, while my experience in each of these hotels was undoubtedly luxurious, you don’t need to spend big to appreciate Cape Town’s physical presence. On my second afternoon, I joined a friend who lives in Cape Town to do the climb of Table Mountain. Walking gradually up the city-side of this huge rock brings a broadening perspective of the city, of Table Bay in front of it and of Robben Island in the distance. Reaching the top after around two arduous hours, an even more impressive panorama opens up. You look down the sunny side of the mountain on Cape Town’s Atlantic ocean beaches and, beyond that, the wind-blown land mass stretches down toward the Cape of Good Hope. Then, on the near side of the mountain there are views over both the region’s prestigious winelands and, right beside them, of the Cape Flats, where a mass of humanity lives in overcrowded townships.

After descending Table Mountain in the revolving cable car, we then drove to nearby Signal Hill. Here we watched as the sun dropped swiftly into the Atlantic, casting a lemony light over the whole of Cape Town and bringing a warm glow to the face of Table Mountain as it departed. Finally, as night fell, we ate delicious seafood at Blues restaurant, behind the beach at trendy Camps Bay.

After this near-perfect afternoon and evening I reflected on my first impressions of Cape Town. Not only was I was still much taken with its physical beauty, I was also now impressed by its personality and spirit. Ok, so most of the people I was encountering worked in tourism but the overall sense I got from all of them – both black and white – was not just of a city looking forward but of a whole country evolving quickly. Was this, I wondered the spirit of the ‘new’ South Africa, built in the image of Mandela, where, in spite of all its problems, there was every reason to hope for a rosy future?

The next day was “Freedom Day”, a public holiday marking the eleventh anniversary of the first democratic elections in South Africa, so I decided to spend part of it visiting Robben Island, where the ‘father’ of this ‘new’ country, Nelson Mandela, was imprisoned from 1964 to 1978.

Now a World Heritage site, this rocky outcrop, within an hour’s boat ride from Cape Town, was used as a prison for ‘undesirables’ by colonial and apartheid rulers for nearly 400 years. Yet the story that emerges from a visit to it is truly inspiring. For it was here, that, in spite of enduring dreadful conditions under apartheid, Mandela and his fellow political prisoners set out their vision of the future South Africa, based on tolerance and reconciliation.

My tour was made all the more moving by the fact that we were guided around the prison’s high security wing by Derek Basson, who is a former political prisoner himself. Encarcerated here for over 5 years from the age the age of just 18, Derek shows no bitterness as he recalls his imprisonment. In fact, he is the embodiment of the Robben Island museum ethos which seeks to show “the triumph of freedom and human dignity over oppression and humiliation.”

As Basson himself pointed out, “we can’t go into tomorrow without knowing about the past.” As a tourist just brushing the surface of Cape Town it is possible to ignore its more shameful history. But that past was undeniably instrumental in shaping the modern South Africa.

As my time in Cape Town wore on, Basson’s words began to resonate more and more for me and I wondered whether I hadn’t just fallen, hook, line and sinker for the glittering façade of the city. The next day, I resolved to find out more about the other side of Cape Town by going on a township tour.

As with the visit to Robben Island, I emerged from the tour better educated and inspired. This was partly due to our Cape Tonian guide Keith and his unshakeable optimism, and partly because of some positive developments we saw in the townships themselves. An early stop on the tour was the fascinating ‘District 6’ museum in town, which exhibits the history of apartheid and its effects on ordinary people. It tells the story of how this multicultural and multiracial area of central Cape Town was effectively ‘ethnically cleansed’ when 60,000 of its residents were forced out, between 1966 and 1983, to make way for a white residential precinct. While nearly all the area was bulldozed, the yuppification never happened due to protests and Cape Town is now left with a sizeable central scar of derelict land where District 6 once stood.

We moved onto three modern-day townships near on the so-called Cape Flats near to the airport – including Langa (relatively small with a population of 250,000) and Kayelitsha, which is home to 1.2 million people. As we drove through these places Keith made no attempt to underplay the Aids pandemic sweeping through them or to pretend that they weren’t seriously affected by poverty, overcrowding and unemployment. But he stressed the initiatives being taken to fight those problems, including a drive to bring electricity and running water to all areas and a ‘greening and cleaning’ policy to restore some civic pride in the townships.

We ended our tour on a high note by visiting the Philani project at Kayelitsha. This organisation cares for the growing number of HIV positive children, is trying to combat malnutrition throughout the townships and has a weaving project whereby local women produce colourful tapestries which are for sale to tourists. Buying something here is a direct contribution to the people who need economic support the most.

For me, the township tour had added another layer to my understanding of and affection for Cape Town. But by the afternoon of my penultimate day I was feeling the need to reconnect with the city’s physical beauty. So I set off by bicycle along Cape Town’s Atlantic seaboard.

Beginning at the central V&A waterfront, I wound my way slowly through the Cape Town’s seaside suburbs. On this hot, cloudless afternoon it was easy to see why Cape Town is considered one of the world’s most desirable cities. Every corner I rounded brought another unforgettable view of the Atlantic ocean rolling onto an sweep of cream-coloured sand. As each bay unfolded so too did its different character – from genteel Bantry through sedate Clifton to ultra-chic Camps, with its frighteningly high ratio of beautiful people.

My hotel for the last night, the Twelve Apostles, was just a few kilometres beyond Camps Bay, set back from the coast on the slopes of the mountains. This is an exciting modern South African hotel which does much more than offer luxury accommodation and exceptional views over Cape Town’s Atlantic coast. Unusual touches here include a sixteen person cinema, the spa occupying caves dug out of the cliffs, and the imaginative menu on offer in ‘Azure’, the hotel restaurant, in which Executive Chef Roberto de Carvalho uses indigenous Fynbos herbs (including Proteas, the national flower) to deliciously enhance the dishes.

But the most striking thing about The Twelve Apostles is how it seems to be genuinely trying to mirror the new demographic of South Africa, with talented young black employees encouraged and supported by a progressive management to rise to senior positions.

The Twelve Apostles was a good place to end my stay, leaving me with a sense of the positive contribution tourism can make to the nascent democracy in South Africa and yet more flavours to add to my impressions of Cape Town.

In five days, my feelings for Cape Town had grown from mere infatuation to something more profound. I’d been captivated by its beauty and by its spirit but I’d also been touched by the scars of its past and the challenges of its present.

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