Chapman’s Peak Drive
Chapman’s Peak is the name of a mountain on the western side of Cape Peninsula. It is opposite the inlet on which the small town of Hout Bay is centered. The western flank of the mountain falls sharply for hundreds of meters into the Atlantic Ocean. A spectacular road, known as Chapman’s Peak Drive, seen above, hugs the near-vertical face of the mountain from Hout Bay to Noordhoek. Hacked out of the face of the mountain between 1915 and 1922, the road was at the time regarded as a major feat of engineering.
Hout Bay sets on the northern side of Chapman’s Peak Drive, approximate a twenty-minute drive from Cape Town. Surrounded entirely by mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, Hout Bay boasts one of the most active fishing harbours in South Africa. Housed within the harbour are the yacht and power-boat marinas – both popular and convenient stopovers for craft from all parts of the globe.
Photo taken along Chapman’s Peak Drive, above and beyond Hout Bay. (ca. 2014).
