Cape Point

On 18 April 1911, the Portuguese liner Lusitania was wrecked just south of Cape Point at 34°23′22″S 18°29′23″E / 34.38944°S 18.48972°E / -34.38944; 18.48972 on Bellows Rock for precisely this reason, prompting the relocation of the lighthouse.

The light of the new Cape Point lighthouse is the most powerful on the South African coast, with a range of 63 kilometres (39 mi; 34 nmi) and an intensity of 10 megacandelas in each flash.

[3] The Cape of Good Hope section of the park is generally wild, unspoiled and undeveloped and is an important haven for seabirds.

Contrary to popular mythology, the meeting point of the currents produces no obvious visual effect; there is no "line in the ocean" where the sea changes colour or looks different in some way.

False Bay, which opens to the east and north of Cape Point, is the location of the well-known naval port of Simon's Town.

The bay is also famous – or infamous – for its great white sharks, which hunt the Cape fur seals that live in the area.

Cape Point in the left foreground, with the Cape of Good Hope almost right behind and some 2.3 km away
Looking from behind the old lighthouse (at top left) to the new lighthouse (a sunlit speck of white very near the point). The lighthouses are 700 metres apart, and the new lighthouse 162 metres lower in altitude so as to remain visible during low cloud.
A map of the Cape Peninsula showing its major features. Cape Point is the small cape jutting out towards the east from The Cape of Good Hope at the southern end of the Peninsula. The lighthouse is on Cape Point, rather than on the Cape of Good Hope to the west.
The courses of the warm Agulhas current (red) along the east coast of South Africa, and the cold Benguela current (blue) along the west coast. Note that the Benguela current does not originate from Antarctic waters in the South Atlantic Ocean, but from upwelling of water from the cold depths of the Atlantic Ocean against the west coast of the continent. The two currents do not "meet" anywhere along the south coast of Africa, except as random eddies from the two currents, that arise and intermingle west of Cape Agulhas .