Having experienced the wild majesty of the Kruger Park and surrounds, travellers can enjoy exquisite beauty on both sides of the Peninsula, just outside Cape Town
The entrance to Tintswalo Atlantic is easy to miss if you’re distracted by the beauty of Hout Bay below the lower reaches of Chapman’s Peak Drive. The luxury hotel has almost no footprint, built along a short, rocky stretch of coastline reached by a shuttle from the small parking lot near the gate.
It’s a mineshaft of a driveway leading to one of the world’s most scenic reception areas, with a glass wall behind the desk featuring a view across the bay to the Sentinel (also known as Hangberg), which will almost certainly become the central focus of the next 300 pictures on each guest’s phone.
The narrow property is brilliantly utilised and realised. A welcoming bar area and large restaurant (with seating in- and outside) offer sea views from every seat. At high tide, the waves lick the rocks directly below the windows. A single line of luxury villas, all named after islands (Robben, Elba, plus a number of others that haven’t famously housed criminals!) provides a private paradise for visitors. A giant bed, an extravagant chandelier and bright, joyful decor including seashells as decorative borders and a bath beneath a picture window that frames the mountain opposite like a painting await guests in their rooms.
Creatures and cuisine
The pool area will be a focus for holidaymakers. The water is heated, an important deal in Cape Town, where sane people – sorry, non-locals – never venture into the freezing ocean and there’s a daybed more luxurious than most people’s master bedroom fixtures. If that’s occupied, cushioned sunbeds and a couple of sections of netting (with more cushions) extending out over the pebble beach offer enough space for everyone to enjoy a tanning session.
A trio of agamas – lizards the length of a handspan with rough scales and graded colouring (including a deep blue around their heads and shoulders) – are so intent on their territory dispute that they don’t pay any attention to rapt spectators; swimmers trying to keep their toes out of the way.
Late-afternoon canapés and cocktails are part of the package, adding to the luxury of the experience and providing an opportunity to hang out with warm, friendly staff – raconteurs all, and all of whom remember each guest’s name, sans notes.
At dinnertime, a tasting menu offers either piscine or plant-based pabulum promiscuity, combining ingredients many diners may never have imagined together, but which form matches that are now apparently perfect partnerships. The only thing that’ll pry you away from your table during the extended meal is a desire to get a different angle on the sunset behind the Sentinel as the turquoise and indigo water changes to a uniform inky black.
During breakfast the following morning, a small pod of dolphins enjoys the shelter of the small bay in front of the hotel, frolicking and flirting as they catch waves. Further out, gannets and gulls compete for sardines close to the surface, diving and piercing the surface like ravenous arrows.
Departing guests are presented with a rock from the beach and encouraged to make a wish before placing it back there. There’s every suspicion that the bulk of those wishes involve guaranteeing a return to this magical location.
Above the beach
Over (or around, depending on your chosen route) the Peninsula, within a literal stone’s throw of Boulders Beach, Tintswalo Boulders has views (from the upper floor) of the rocks at one end of the beach, with huddles of African penguins dotting their surfaces. Beyond that is the profound expanse of False Bay and, down the coast a little, Simon’s Town all the way around to Kalk Bay.
The hotel was originally a private home, meaning that there are some architectural quirks like a bathroom, in the Mayflower suite, that measures 11m from the doorway to the shower’s back wall. The dining area on the patio on the first floor could hardly be more picturesque – and it’s comfortable too, sheltered from the wind but open to the sea views. The kitchen is open plan, meaning that Dustin, the world’s most cheerful chef, is always chirping and bustling about for the duration of his shift, his creative energy almost palpable.
On the top floor, in an open area between two private suites, a small outdoor pool and sunbeds provide a compelling reason to relax outside, unbothered by the crowds below.
For the birds!
There is a compelling reason for those crowds, though: the endangered African penguin colony at Boulders is an extraordinary meeting of urban and wild spaces, and the people and creatures that occupy them. For guests, the boardwalk behind the beach can be accessed by an exterior staircase running down one side of the hotel and a door to which each guest gets a key.
Behind a low fence – there for visitor protection; penguins defending their guests or young can deliver a nasty nip – adult and juvenile birds mumble, bray and bark, easy to frame well for photographic purposes without ever getting in their way.
At one end of the boardwalk is a visitor’s centre. Going through there (which requires paying conservation fees) allows closer access to the birds’ breeding area. The other end – keep an eye out for the dassies that share the space – has a booth for the fee payment, right alongside a compact beach where the giant boulders create a transcendent view and a scene in which it just about feels worth it to brave the bracing cold of the water just for the chance to be part of the milieu.
Clambering skills and agility are needed to progress a little further down the beach to where the penguins do their swimming, lolling about in the waves, perfectly adapted to be balletically elegant in the water. That is much less the case on land, where they spend an inordinate amount of time preening and cleaning, openly dismissive of visitors’ needs to take a focused photograph.
Back in the hotel, the structure of the common area means there are several dining options, with two separate patios, an intimate lounge with a fireplace and a large dining table next to the kitchen, allowing for a romantic atmosphere or social engagement, depending on your mood.
If you’re sitting in a private corner, you can quietly judge other guests based on the ships their rooms are named for. Endeavour? It sank. Bounty? A famous mutiny. Mayflower? Well, it made it to its destination, though there’s room to question if the outcome was a success…
Text | Bruce Dennill
Photography | Bruce Dennill and Supplied
For more information or to book a stay, visit tintswalo.com.
