Cape Town, where the fog stops at the mountain
FOG hides the entire world map until you walk it. In Cape Town your cleared ground runs into Table Mountain and simply stops, which makes an unusually good looking map.
An amphitheatre, and a hard edge
The City Bowl is exactly what the name says: a shallow bowl of streets held between Table Mountain, Devil's Peak, Signal Hill and the harbour. That means two things for walking. It is steep, with the climb from the Foreshore up toward Kloof Nek gaining a couple of hundred metres, and it is bounded, because above a certain contour there are no more streets, only mountain.
The bounded part is what makes this city interesting on a fog map. In most places your cleared area fades out gradually at the edges. In Cape Town it stops along a hard line where the last road ends and the slope begins, and that line is one of the most recognisable shapes you will ever draw.
The City Bowl on foot
Inside the bowl the plan is a rough colonial grid tilted to the shoreline, with Long Street, Bree Street and Loop Street running parallel down toward the harbour and the cross streets climbing hard between them. St George's Mall is pedestrianised. Company's Garden cuts a green strip up the middle from Adderley Street. Bo-Kaap sits west of the centre, steep and cobbled with very short blocks, so it fills in fast because the streets are packed so close together.
Above that, Gardens, Tamboerskloof and Oranjezicht are residential and properly hilly, with the reservoir paths and Deer Park behind them. Woodstock and Observatory run east along the Main Road and are flatter going.
The promenade, which is the easy win
The Sea Point promenade is the flat, kilometre-eating option: a paved seafront path running roughly three kilometres from Mouille Point past Green Point toward Bantry Bay, open to the Atlantic the whole way. Add the Green Point Urban Park and the V and A Waterfront and you have a clean stripe along the coast without a single climb in it.
A good full day combines the two. Company's Garden, up through Bo-Kaap, along the Signal Hill road for the view, then down to Green Point and finish on the promenade. Hills first, flat last, which is the correct order.
Wind, rain and the seasons
Cape Town has a Mediterranean climate, which here means wet windy winters from roughly June to August and dry summers. The summer catch is the south easter, the wind locals call the Cape Doctor, which can blow hard enough for days at a stretch that a coastal walk stops being pleasant. Late summer and early autumn, February into April, are the calm reliable months.
Practical note that any local will give you unprompted: stick to the busier routes, walk in daylight, and keep the phone put away when you are not using it. That is ordinary advice here, not alarm.
Scale, honesty and what FOG shows
The walkable core is small compared with the metro around it. Cape Town spreads a long way south down the peninsula and east across the Flats, and very little of that is connected on foot. Expect the City Bowl to fill quickly and the overall city percent to stay modest for a long time.
FOG shows that number for any city you have walked. It reveals every street you physically cover, permanently, with no account, no cloud, no analytics and no tracking. Free to explore, and one purchase of USD 5.99 unlocks unlimited ranks, every character and history import.
Questions people actually ask
Why does my cleared area have such a sharp edge?
Because the streets stop where the mountain starts. FOG only clears ground you physically walk, so the boundary of the City Bowl draws itself.
Do hiking trails count?
FOG works anywhere on Earth, walking, running or riding, so a path up the mountain reveals ground the same as a street does.
Does it need signal or a data connection?
There is no account and no cloud. The map lives on your phone and never leaves it, and you can export your own data.
Is there a free version?
It is free to explore. One purchase of USD 5.99 unlocks unlimited ranks, every character and history import, and there is no subscription.
Start with a dark map.
FOG is free to explore. No account, no subscription, and your map never leaves your phone.
free to explore · one purchase unlocks everything · never a subscription