In pod we trust

In wonderful Cape Town, Richard Price searches out whales and wine at this top-value long-haul location

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Every year, southern right whales make the trip from Antarctica to the coast of South Africa to mate and calve. Seeing them up close is an astonishing sight, a real tonic for the mind and spirit.

And to allow us to see them, there is a new seasonal visitor to the Cape, Norse Atlantic Airways, which has begun flying three times a week during the northern hemisphere winter.

For extra comfort, if you can stretch to premium economy, you can certainly stretch out. My outbound flight was an overnighter and I arrived fresh and ready to get exploring straight away.

A return ticket costs from £499, which is certainly tempting for a destination 6,000 miles away.

Cape Town is a beautiful city, wrapped around the imposing bulk of Table Mountain.

First stop for most visitors will be the cable car to the top and, if the cloud cap that often sits on it - the Tablecloth - is absent, the reward is spectacular views over the city and Atlantic.

On my group's visit, the cable car was out of action. We went instead to the rather lower Signal Hill, where the view is still impressive, before taking a tour of Bo-Kaap, a picturesque historic district of brightly coloured houses, mosques and quirky shops.

A once-segregated area for "Cape Malays" workers brought in by the Dutch settlers - it is still a predominantly Muslim district.

Like the nearby District Sixwhere thousands of citizens were expelled for a whites-only development that never happened - it offers insight into the history of South Africa in the apartheid era and since.

Soon it's time to head to the V&A Waterfront, a large and growing area of the former Cape Town docks now given over to restaurants, bars, shops and leisure I activities, where tourists and Capetonians alike go to relax.