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The World of Birds, the largest bird park in Africa, housing over 3000 birds and small animals, which belong to 400 different species, is situated in Hout Bay. It is situated in 4 hectares of garden setting and surrounded by the best of Cape Town’s mountain ranges, including the 12 Apostles and Constantiaberg. Hout Bay is a about an 8 minute drive from the leafy suburbs of Constantia and Bishopscourt where we have some of our loveliest Cape Town villas.  Each Capetown villa has its own unique garden for you and your family to enjoy while on your Cape Town holiday.

Guests of these villas in Cape Town who would like to visit the World of Birds will delight in their various walk through aviaries, each individually landscaped to reflect different habitats and allowing visitors to interact with the birds. The range of birds that guests are likely to see include swans, falcons, turkeys, owls, vultures and crows.

The Monkey Jungle is also popular and houses 38 mischievous New World monkeys. If guests of our Cape Town villa rentals are lucky enough they may see young monkey infants, who ride on their mothers backs for the first month of their life. Other small animals that inhabit the World of Birds are meerkats, porcupines, raccoons and foxes.

Before you head off to your Cape Town villa rental, be sure to stop by the reptile enclosure to view green iguanas and turtles. Then it’s just a short trip back to the comfort of your spacious villa in Cape Town.

The World of Birds is open daily and costs R70 for adults, R40 for children and R55 for pensioners and students. The 100 000 visitors that visit the World of Birds every year surely give an indication of how entertaining an activity bird watching can be.

Over the past few years Capetonians have seen an increase in shark attacks, especially along the False Bay area. But have no fear, measures have been put in place to ensure that it is safe for guests of our Cape Town villas to go back into the water.

The Shark Spotters Programme is community driven and has proven to be highly effective as there have been numerous shark spottings since the programme was founded in 2004. Between 15 and 20 shark spotters are employed at any given time at 9 beaches that are popular for swimming. These beaches include Muizenberg, St. James and Fish Hoek, in close proximity to out Bishopscourt and Constantia villas in Cape Town. Although many of the houses in our Cape Town villa rental collection include their own pools, it is understandable that no Cape Town holiday is complete without a dip in the ocean.

The Shark Spotters are situated on elevated platforms, mostly positioned upon the mountain slopes surrounding many of our beaches, 7 days a week during daylight hours. Each shark spotter is equipped with polarized sunglasses to minimize the suns glare on the ocean and a pair of binoculars, they are kept in contact with a partner shark spotter on the beach and radio them of a change in any conditions. If a shark is spotted the beach spotter immediately sounds a siren and raises a flag that requests that everyone leaves the water.

Guests of our Cape Town villa rentals should familiarize themselves with the flag system: a red flag with a white shark means that the spotters are on a high shark alert; when a white flag with a black shark has been raised then a shark has been spotted; when a black flag with a black shark is flying then spotting conditions are poor and swimmers should be cautious; a green flag with a green shark means that spotting conditions are good.

Guests of our Capetown villa will find a board explaining the different flags on every beach where the Shark Spotters operate. So rest assured, the waves are being monitored, feel free to enjoy the beaches and oceans of this beautiful city.

During their stay in the Mother City, visitors should make their way to the top corner of Adderley Street to Church Square and the Slave Lodge and experience some of the area’s history while on their Cape Town holiday.

Church Square is located at the entrance of the Gothic styled Groote Kerk, it is the site where slaves would wait under a ‘slave tree’ while their owners attended church. A statue of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyer was erected in the square in 1920 to acknowledge Hofmeyers efforts to have Dutch recognized as a language equal to English in the constitution in 1910.

Despite its historical significance, Church Square acted as a car park from the 1970’s until the 1990’s. In 2004 it was converted into one of the city’s multi-functional ‘green’ spaces. Since then various television commercials have been shot in this space and was once covered with fake snow. As part of the annual Infecting the City Festival of performing art, Church Square was covered once covered with grass and was used as a temporary performance space. Guests of our Cape Town villas may find themselves fortunate enough to experience one of these transformations during their stay.

The former Slave Lodge is a prominent building in Church Square and is open to the public from Monday to Friday for a small fee. It was known until 1967 as the Cultural History Museum when the Slave Lodge was built on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. In its time it housed thousands of slaves, this is when slavery was a large industry in the Cape Colony. It was during this time that it was also known as the Cape Colony’s largest brothel.

In 1810, after the British had taken over and auctioned off all of the slaves, the building became the Supreme Court. The Slave Lodge was then used as government offices until 1966, when it was reopened as a museum.

Today the Slave Lodge acts as a monument to the past with historical displays of the Cape as well as collections of antiques and artifacts from around the world and an exhibition on the years of slavery.

We offer a range of Cape Town villa rentals in the area. Whether you enjoy staying in a Capetown villa by the sea, in the popular seaside suburbs of Camps Bay and Clifton, or if you prefer a villa in Cape Town in a tranquil upmarket area such as Bishopscourt or Constantia, our selection of Cape Town villa rental offers something for every taste.