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Everyone has their favourite spot for sundowners – those quintessential African sunset drinks – whether it's on the beach, by a bushveld waterhole or on the murmuring terrace of an exclusive hotel.
What about sitting on a boulder with your legs dangling over the edge of a thousand metre drop with a swollen, oval sun melting into a sapphire ocean? Sounds impossible?
It's right here in the middle of Cape Town: Table Mountain is open for sunsets and it's half-price to the top by cable car.
It's a summer season thing – winter months are too wet and the days too short. The blustery summer wind – the blandly named South Easter - can be a problem but if it's too strong, the cable car won’t run, and anyway, the mountain will be covered in its 'tablecloth' - a thick, billowing cloud.
Pack a picnic basket and a jersey, let the 6pm queue die down and head up on the wonderfully revolving cable car, spinning its way to the top to deposit you minutes later into a world far removed from the honking melee of Cape Town’s traffic below you.
The first thing that hits you is the blanket of silence. Apart from the lisping wind and occasional snatch of breeze-born laughter, it's a quiet place. Move away from the shop and restaurant area and sniff out a secluded spot.
It's hard to move though; your steps seem hesitant and unsure for the simple reason that your eyes are always drawn to the view – and what a view it is.
It's here, at the juncture where original adjectives are needed, that the writer reaches for a thesaurus. Breathtaking, stunning, wonderful... nice words but they just don't cut it.
The views from the top make you gasp, they leave you pleading for answers: how can a sea be that blue? What made that chain of mountains dance up and down on their way to the tip of the peninsula? And look at that sun!
Now's the time to relax. Uncork the chardonnay, break out the nibbles and gorge yourself on the drama of an African sunset.
You never quite know what to expect at a point where two massive oceans collide and frontal systems slam into the tip of an enormous continent from all sides.
The last time I was on Table Mountain a huge, heaving mass of sunburnt cloud covered the Atlantic Ocean – the harbinger of the next day's rain - and we were treated to a jaw-dropping spectacle of super-sized pink and orange candy floss.
The time before, I watched a golden orb dip below a bruised purple sea; who knows what you will get.
Take your time. You've got until 10pm when the last cable car goes down so you can move about a bit.
Gape at the Atlantic Ocean and stern mountain sentinels to the west, and then follow the paths to the lookout points that hang out over the city bowl and watch the lights come on as Cape Town's nightlife sleepily wakes up.
Darkness comes quickly up on the mountain, however - Coleridge was right: 'the sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the night' – and before you know it, you're spinning (a little more unsteadily now) back down to Cape Town's soft nocturnal embrace.
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