Rentals Cape Town

"We drove her cabriolet down the road to Camps Bay..." (Sugardrive, South African band, late 1990's)
	Sophisticated & stylish or casual & beachy, we have YOUR Camps Bay Villa or Apartment

Lines that pretty much capture the Camps Bay gist: a relaxed and visually marvellous strip of photogenic real estate sandwiched between the gently curving, palm edged bay and the back end of Table Mountain.   

- Camps Bay: a lazy opulence that will switch your inner tempo from presto to largo -

Sitting on the Atlantic coastline about 6km from Cape Town central and 30km from Cape Town International Airport there are two roads leading to Camps Bay (there are maybe 3 or more but we've simplified it), the high road or the low road. Both routes take about the same time to get you there and it is as much a matter of mood and preference as starting point as to which one you choose. Victoria Road is the low road continuing from the main road out of Cape Town, through Greenpoint and Seapoint and starting in Bantry Bay.

Victoria Road bends its way along the base of the mountain rock that drops steeply into the sea. Look up the slopes to see the high priced glass and concrete superhomes in the blocky and angular modern style that seems to have flourished on these rocky gradients. Drop round a steady bend and there's Camps Bay: half a mile of beachfront where the competition and collaboration of nature and human has resulted in a lazy opulence that will switch your inner tempo from presto to largo.

- Shyer, domesticated Camps Bay -

Come in via Camps Bay Drive which goes from Kloof Nek, the pass that curls up from the west part of the city between Lions Head and Table Mountain, and the shyer, domesticated Camps Bay is revealed. Hibiscus and pelargonium lined avenues lead off on either side to large well cared for properties. If you are the one driving then keep your eyes on the snaking road and try not to stare at the contrast of the boulders and fynbos vegetation of the Table Mountain range and the infinite Atlantic spilling out below.

Don't miss the two recently refurbished 12 pounder cannons (hauled out of the Glen, a forested valley below, in 1998) on your right as you pass over Kloof Nek to Camps Bay Drive. These were used by the French and Dutch forces to deter naughty English soldiers from attempted invasions.

- A quick history lesson -

Named after von Kamptz who was either 1) a sailor for the Dutch East India Company, 2) a German-born entrepreneur with friends in high places who went to India and made then lost his fortune there. He ended up in the Cape and acquired the estate, Ravensteyn, by marrying its owner Anna Wernich in 1778. Ravensteyn was a prosperous vegetable and dairy cattle farm comprising of land over the Kloof Nek pass. Disputes in land ownership and compensation payable between von Kamptz and the Dutch government as a result of a war of the Dutch and French with the British ensued. Von Kamptz relocated to Holland with his family and was eventually paid out for Ravensteyn by the Dutch.

Publicity and acrimony between this feisty landowner and the bureaucrats of the day (who referred to him as "troublesome and annoying") were enough to solidify the name "de Baai van von Kamptz", into the collective consciousness and mapbooks of the region.