Philip, or Fil-eep as he pronounces it, has the sharpest South African accent we’ve heard since we touched down. Bald, fierce and in his fifties, he’s our tour guide for the day, having collected us and a few other Brits and Americans, from our various hotels.

We’re all off on the Cape Point Peninsula Tour, heading south out of the city, in search of rugged landscapes, crashing oceans and African penguins. We travel down the Atlantic coast, via Three Anchor Bay, Clifton and Camps Bay - all familiar from yesterday’s excursion - and then head on to Houts Bay via Llandudno.

Philip points out Richard Branson has a holiday home there, and our sharp-talking guide seems as obsessed by property prices as our onboard commentator was on the open-top bus yesterday. It’s obviously the biggest talking point on the city, and Philip spends the day comparing property values of the various areas wherever we go.

The first stop is at a spectacular viewpoint overlooking Houts Bay and Coman buys three pretty ornamental birds made of beads and wire from a roadside vendor. We continue along Chapman’s Peak Drive, a 10km stretch of cliffside road with 150 bends, which is a staggering piece of engineering. Rocks cascade down to the sea and through it all snakes the hard-cut road, originally built by convicts at the start of the 20th century. Below us is a huge curve of white sand, the aptly named Long Beach, which lies before the little windswept village of Scarborough and a nearby ostrich farm.

Our destination is the Cape of Good Hope, first sighted by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488 and then re-discovered by Vasco de Gama eight years later as he mapped out the elusive Spice Route route to India. For 150 years it remained in Portuguese hands but the Dutch seized control in 1652, establishing Cape Town as the halfway-point refreshment station for the ships of the Dutch East India Company. Until the Suez Canal was finished Cape Town was the busiest port in the world, with vast wealth passing through.

Philip has warned us that for the past week there have been enormous queues to enter Table Mountain National Park, as the 20,000 acre nature reserve housing the Cape Of Good Hope and Cape Point is named. He’s been stuck for almost an hour each day with buses of tourists waiting to get in, but with lots of people nursing sore heads after the New Year celebrations, our early start means we’ve beaten the crowds and we cruise straight in at just gone 10am with no hassles at all.

There’s already a few people jostling for position to get their photo taken by the sign declaring us at the Most South Western Point Of The African Continent, but we get our snap easily enough with the ocean rolling behind us, and seals basking in rocks nearby. Next up is the Cape Point lighthouse where on my previous visit we’d had baboons darting in and out of the crowds trying to steal food. Today, there’s none to be seen, with the spotting of a lonesome ostrich being the sole wildlife of note.

Eschewing the funicular which transports tourists from the car park to the lighthouse, built in 1860 but replaced with a more effective model on Dias Point in 1919 after the loss of the Portuguese liner Lusitania eight years earlier due to the original lighthouse being shrouded in fog, we elect to hike up the hillside, grateful for a bit of exercise and some bracing air. At the top we take a snap with the sea surging 260 metres below us, next stop due south being Antarctica, with a signpost handily showing distances to New York, London, Sydney, Berlin, Paris, Rio and Amsterdam.

The white sand beaches in sheltered coves nearby look idyllic but Philip warns us of the Atlantic’s ‘rejuvenating’ powers. “If you go in as a man,” he says, “the water is so cold you come out as a boy!” It’s up to ten degrees chillier than the sea just a few miles away on the other side of the peninsula. There in False Bay the warm waters of the Indian Ocean and cold waters of the Atlantic mix, meaning swimmers will brave those beaches whilst only surfers in wetsuits are mad enough to dive into the roiling Atlantic on the western shore. We grab a coffee at the appropriately monikered Two Oceans Restaurant before jumping back on the bus.

As we leave the National Park, sure enough huge queues have built up waiting to enter, the tailback suggesting people will have a very long wait to get their photo taken. There’s further queues at our next stop, Boulders Beach Visitor Centre, where hordes of tourists stop to view the huge colony of wild African penguins that live there. The boardwalk is rammed, with one loud American woman explaining to her friends the difference between Antarctic penguins and those that supposedly live in the Arctic. I have to bite my tongue at her ignorance.

Despite the name of the visitor centre, we’re actually on Foxy Beach, the afore mentioned Boulders Beach itself being hidden a little around the bay. On my previous visit we’d actually been on the sand there with the penguins which is now discouraged so tourists are funnelled on to Foxy Beach where we’re kept separate from the birds, and despite the crowds it’s a spectacular setting, with incredible blue and turquoise water and white sands.

We head into Simon’s Town and stop at the Harbour View Restaurant for lunch, tucking into a Cape Malay veggie curry and a Greek salad, before exploring the shops and buying a bottle of local Simonsig champagne for later. Our drive back towards Cape Town takes us through Constantia, one of the most desirable areas of the city, and illustrative of just how vast this city is, covering 2500sq km.

The final stop of our tour is the exceptionally pretty Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, on the eastern flank of Table Mountain and bequeathed to the city by Cecil Rhodes. We walk along the Treetop Canopy bridge and wander through the beautiful landscaped areas before grabbing our bags from the minibus and taking our leave of Philip and the tour bus.

Swinging up outside the entrance in a white hire car is our friend Simon, who is holidaying nearby with his girlfriend Holly and their baby daughter Vivi. We hop in and head over to their lovely villa, where corks are popped and we toast a happy new year. As we sit by their pool, playing with the dogs and soaking up the tranquility of the garden amidst the exotic birdsong, a light misty rain starts to freshen the air.

By the time we arrive at the nearby Steenberg wine estate it’s turned into heavy rain and our plan to dine outside its gorgeous Bistro Sixteen82 restaurant is changed to a table indoors. The food is absolutely stunning; a vegan tapas menu of sheer delight, liberally washed down with bottle after bottle of the vineyard’s Black Swan sauvignon blanc.

With Simon’s work as a celebrated photographer and Holly’s colourful childhood in LA and South Africa we swap tales of celebrity indiscretions and family histories well past our fellow diners leaving and finally call Ubers to collect us as the staff are closing up.

Our thirty minute drive back to central Cape Town and the Waterfront reveals the lights of the city strung out like jewels below us. It’s a beautiful end to a fabulous night... but by God, we’re ready for bed!!