The Mountains Around Franschhoek
You can laugh at Capetonians who still believe the known world stops at the Boland Mountains, but just imagine the plight of the early settlers faced with the mission of finding a way over thorn into the African interior - a place laden, they were sure, with vast treasures.
From the summit of Table Mountain, as you turn from northwest to southwest, the skyline is defined by sawtooth peaks and ridges. The mountains of the Boland do not form so much a series of ranges as a mountain whorl, with the epicentre just about plumb in the middle of Franschhoek. Just reel off the names: Hottentots Holland, Limietberg, Stellenboschberg, Groot Drakenstein, Slanghoekberg, Wemmershoekberg, Franschhoekberg, Klein Drakenstein the list goes on and on.
Little wonder Jan van Riebeeck called them all the Mountains of Africa. If you want to find one stand-out thing though, it's got to be the fact that they are the centre of fynbos endemism: in other words, the greatest diversity of fynbos, at family, genus and species level, is right there, lying just above those glorious vineyards. It's a World Heritage Site, it's so flipping amazing, in a flowering kind of way.
Accommodation in Franschhoek will transport guests from busy city life into a world of beautiful natural scenery, charming architecture and ...
Franschhoek is a picturesque town that is gently nestled between towering mountains in the spectacular Cape Winelands and is renowned for it...