Cape Town is utterly unique. The Mother City is a gem that glitters at the tip of Africa. Like a rare diamond glistens in the sunlight and attracts envious glances, so too does Cape Town to every traveller's itinerary. In practically every single way. Care to mention any aspect, and I am sure that Cape Town will have an element that would confound all expectations and understandings. But if Cape Town is the diamond, her people are its sparkle!

Where else in the world, but Cape Town would you have a national park(www.sanparks.org/parks/table_mountain/) smack bang in the middle of a city with its 30 000 hectares of park that stretches from the V&A Waterfront(www.waterfront.co.za) to Cape Point( and includes a 1000 km2 of seas and coastlines around the park? Where else could you walk from one side of the park to the other and see two totally different oceans in as little as an hour? It is here that you can stand at Cape Point and imagine stretching yourself all the way to the South Pole with nothing but sea between you and the white continent.

In Cape Town you can sit at a posh Waterfront bar and sip cocktails, nibble on some snacks while you watch container vessels, yachts and fishing vessels come and go. One man's holiday and relaxation is another man's work, it seems. It is in Cape Town that you find South Africa's oldest building - the Castle of Good Hope. It was here that the Dutch and later the British based themselves and their governmental policies started to shape the land of South Africa and irrevocably change the destiny of Europe and Africa. The castle is dwarfed by the buildings of the central business district that surround it. The castle is like a mother whose children and grown taller than herself, but where she still the dominat force and a reminder of where they come from!

Cape Town is home to South Africa's oldest vineyards and start of its world famous wines. Groot Constantia was home to Simon van der Stel, governor of the Cape in the late 17th century. Not even a stone's throw from my folk's places are 5 world class wine estates(www.constantiawineroute.co.za). Bliss! Not even an hour's drive away are more wine estates than you can throw a stick at. Places wih names like the wine they produce - Franschoek, Paarl, Wellington, Stellenbosch. A wine buff here is spoilt for choice and every taste catered for. Especially in places such a magnificent backdrops!

Who has not seen a picture of Table Mountain and been able to recognise it immediately? It is almost as if the outline is etched on our genes from when our ancestors roamed these shores in eons past. You only need stand on the mountains that surround Cape Town and which tower over the surround plain to appreciate this breath-taking beauty. A friend say that he was literally in tears at the beauty of the Scottish highlands, but I wonder what he would feel if he stood on Cape Town's mountains on a clear day. I grew up here and I never fail to be awestruck!

Every day is totally new. With an ever-changing weather, the mountains seem to play hide and seek with your eyes. Clouds become the costumes that the mountains dance behind. And with the weather comes the unforgiving sea. Shipwrecks litter the coastlines, and seaweed driven onto the shores in great sinking heaps, give testimony to the ferocity of the seas. But the seas here can be so still as to be a millpond.

It is a place with beaches to rival the Caribbean and the Med! But with scenery to match! Yesterday we were up in the mountains and saw a pair of nestling black eagles soaring the thermals and hunting rock-scurrying rodents. While far below the world famous big surf break Dungeons was "cooking" and surfers were being towed into those leviathans of the sea crashing onto the exposed reefs. Where else, but Cape Town!

But it is really the people of this town that gives Cape Town its diamond sparkle! Everybody we speak to, speaks of hope. Positivity and optimism are the order of the day and you can not help to be infected with the same "vib". Here in Cape Town, solving problems and adapting with the times is part and parcel of everyday life! Never is the old South African expression - "die boer maaks 'n plan(the farmer makes a plan)" more appropriate. Whatever anybody says, it is the people here that capture your heart and this awesome, utterly unique diamond of a place, Cape Town, is the place that they do it!

Come here and fall in love!