Cape Point is where the Cape Peninsula runs out of land: a ridge of sandstone cliffs falling about two hundred metres into the Atlantic, with a lighthouse on top and a wind that can blow your visor shut. People often say it is where two oceans meet and that it is the southern tip of Africa. Neither is quite right. The tip of the continent is Cape Agulhas, a long way east, and the meeting of warm and cold currents is a broad, shifting zone rather than a line, but none of that matters when you stand on the viewing platform and watch the swell come in from Antarctica.
The road in runs through the Cape of Good Hope section of Table Mountain National Park, and you pay an entry fee at the gate. Inside, the tarmac is narrow and rolling, bordered by low fynbos, a plant kingdom that exists nowhere else on Earth in such variety. Ostriches wander the verges, bontebok graze on the flats, and the baboons are famous for opening bags and stealing sandwiches, so keep your panniers shut and never feed them.
Two lighthouses stand here. The older one, completed around 1860, sat so high that it was often wrapped in cloud and useless to ships, and after a Portuguese liner struck the rocks below in 1911 a second, lower light was built. You can walk up from the car park or ride the funicular, which carries the name of the legendary Flying Dutchman, the ghost ship said to haunt these waters.
The best time to come is a weekday morning, when the tour buses have not yet arrived and the light is clean. Winter brings dramatic seas and fewer visitors, while summer's south-easter can be brutal on the exposed road, so grip the bars and expect gusts. The ride down the peninsula, through Kommetjie and past the penguins at Boulders if you have time, is one of the finest short coastal runs in the country.
Bring a windproof layer even in January. The edge of Africa is rarely warm.