Situated at the water’s edge of the Knysna Lagoon, this magnificent 6 Bedroom House, plus 3 sea-facing cottages, offers the very best location on the South African coastline.
South Africa: Shark Cage Diving – Gansbaai’s Wild Ocean Thrills
South Africa: Shark Cage Diving – Gansbaai’s Wild Ocean Thrills
🗺️ Gansbaai — South Africa’s Shark Capital
Gansbaai is a small but punchy little fishing town on the Western Cape of South Africa, sitting roughly 160 kilometres south-east of Cape Town along the so-called Whale Coast. It has a population of only around 15,000 people, and for most of its history it was simply a working harbour town, its economy built on the commercial fishing of snoek, abalone and rock lobster. That all started to change in a big way during the 1990s when the great white shark cage diving industry took off here, and Gansbaai found itself with an unexpected new identity as one of the most thrilling wildlife tourism destinations on the entire African continent. It is now, without much argument, the self-proclaimed great white shark capital of the world — though we’ll come back to why that title has become a little complicated in recent years. We spent a couple of days in this small but rather extraordinary town exploring the region, getting wet, and staring down things with a lot more teeth than us.
🚗 Getting There — Stellenbosch and the Scenic Route East
It was time to say goodbye to Cape Town and head east along the cape to the small coastal town of Gansbaai, which was about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the city. Our route followed the coast south-east, passing through some genuinely spectacular scenery and taking us south of the most famous wine regions in all of South Africa, centred around the handsome university town of Stellenbosch. The Stellenbosch wine region was formally established in 1679 when Simon van der Stel, the Governor of the Dutch Cape Colony, founded the settlement that now bears his name. Today the surrounding area contains well over 150 wine estates, making it one of the oldest and most prestigious wine regions in the Southern Hemisphere. There are numerous vineyards in and around Stellenbosch, several of which are open to visitors for tastings and tours, and the town itself is an absolute gem of Cape Dutch architecture — all whitewashed gables and grand oak-lined streets. We had been thoroughly enjoying South African wines during our stay, getting through rather more bottles than we’d care to admit, but we didn’t really have any interest in a full vineyard tour on this occasion. We did, however, think we’d do a short detour just to see what the town of Stellenbosch was like, and we were glad we did. It’s a lovely spot, full of students from the university — one of South Africa’s most prestigious, founded in 1918 — and with a lively café culture and some excellent restaurants tucked in amongst the beautiful historic buildings.
The day had started as a beautiful, crisp winter morning — remember, South Africa’s seasons are the mirror image of ours back in England, so June is mid-winter down here — but as we travelled east down the Cape Peninsula, the clouds rolled in with a determined sense of purpose, and the sun disappeared behind a grey blanket. By the time we rolled into the seaside town of Hermanus, the sun had gone entirely and rain was very much in the air. Hermanus is itself a rather fine little town, founded in the early 19th century and initially known as Hermanuspietersfontein, a name so unwieldy that the locals were presumably relieved when it was shortened to its current form in 1902. It sits dramatically above Walker Bay and is actually one of the best land-based whale watching spots in the entire world — the bay even has an official whale crier, a municipal employee who walks the cliffs blowing a kelp horn to alert residents and visitors to nearby whale sightings, a tradition that has been going since 1992 and which is, as far as anyone can tell, completely unique in the world. As we rolled through Hermanus, nothing really appealed about the town in the damp and gloom, and I’m not sure we gave it a fair shot to be perfectly honest. But just as we were leaving the town, we spotted a beach that looked genuinely lovely, even draped in grey weather. Hermanus is particularly famous as a place where southern right whales pass through during the winter months — these magnificent creatures migrate up from the Antarctic each year between June and December to calve in the sheltered waters of Walker Bay — but with a grey-coloured sea and sky and visibility that wouldn’t have shamed a London November, our hopes of spotting one were, frankly, not high. Sadly, that proved to be exactly the case. Still, it didn’t stop us from taking a blustery walk along the beach, which had some genuinely lovely sand dunes rolling up from the shoreline. We stopped briefly to watch a couple of local young lads absolutely flying across the waves on their boards, making it look effortless in the way that only teenagers can, before jumping back in the car and pressing on to Gansbaai.
🌲 Platbos Forest Cabins — Roughing It in the Ancient Trees
I had booked us to stay in the Platbos Forest Cabins, situated about 15 minutes’ drive from the town of Gansbaai itself, nestled inside the remarkable Platbos Forest. Platbos is one of the southernmost indigenous forests in Africa and one of the rarest ecosystems on earth — a relict forest of ancient hardwood trees, some of which have been standing for well over a thousand years, in a landscape otherwise characterised by the fynbos scrubland of the Western Cape. “Platbos” means “flat forest” in Afrikaans, and the forest sits on the Baviaanspoort Hills, covering around 250 hectares and containing trees such as white milkwood, candlewood and wild peach. Remarkably, given how long human settlement has existed in this corner of South Africa, the forest has survived largely intact, and it is now protected as part of a conservation project run by the Platbos Foundation. Luckily, the combination of GPS and Google Maps — those twin saviours of the lost traveller — got us to the entrance of the forest without too much drama, and from there we followed the signs, which led us onto a dirt road for a couple of kilometres. Now, this road was emphatically not designed for a small city hatchback. It was deeply rutted, peppered with large protruding rocks, and seemed to actively resent the presence of our tiny hire car with its frankly optimistic ground clearance. Even when I was driving at something approaching walking pace it was extremely hard not to bottom the car out on the larger rocks. There was a certain amount of muttering from the passenger seat, and I can’t say it was entirely unwarranted. Finally, however, we reached an open field that served as the reception and car park, where we had to pick up the key for our cabin, collect an armful of wood for the fire, and gather the water for the wood-burning heater that provided our hot shower. A trail then led us through the forest for about 100 metres to where our cabin was situated, in a small clearing with a fire pit and a separate bathroom block. To call it a cabin was, if we’re being honest, somewhat misleading — all the walls were canvas, which you could roll up entirely, making the space theoretically completely open to the elements. Given that it was the middle of a Western Cape winter and the temperature at night was dropping to around 8 or 9 degrees Celsius, we elected not to take advantage of the open-air option and settled for unrolling just one panel for a bit of ventilation. The cabins are entirely off-grid — no mains electricity, no gas supply from the national grid, nothing. Solar panels provided enough power for some subdued but perfectly adequate lighting, a gas bottle fed a two-ring hob for cooking, and the wood-burning stove gave off a tremendously satisfying heat once we’d wrestled it into action. All of which is to say: it was absolutely brilliant. The cabin was cosy, surprisingly spacious, furnished with lovely chunky wooden furniture, and the sound of the ancient forest at night was something quite special. If you can live without Netflix for a couple of evenings, we’d recommend it wholeheartedly.
🦈 Cage Diving with Marine Dynamics — Into the Deep with Something Toothy
One of the things I had most wanted to do when we first started planning our South Africa trip was shark cage diving, and Gansbaai is, without question, one of the very best places in the world to do it. The reason for that comes down to geography and ecology. Just offshore from the village of Kleinbaai — a tiny settlement a few kilometres from Gansbaai town itself — lies a narrow stretch of water between Dyer Island and the smaller Geyser Rock known as Shark Alley. Dyer Island, first charted by the American sealer Samson Dyer in the early 19th century, and Geyser Rock together support a resident Cape fur seal colony of somewhere in the region of 60,000 animals — one of the largest in the world. For most of the 20th century this was a place where great white sharks gathered in extraordinary concentrations, drawn by the year-round availability of seals as prey. The cage diving industry here began in earnest in the early 1990s, pioneered by operators who recognised that divers from around the world would pay handsomely for the chance to be in the water with the ocean’s apex predator. By the early 2000s it had become a serious industry, with Gansbaai welcoming tens of thousands of visitors a year and the local economy becoming substantially dependent on those magnificent, terrifying fish. I had booked us on a tour with Marine Dynamics, one of the most highly regarded operators in the area, who have been running cage dives since 1999 and are known for their strong commitment to shark research and conservation alongside the tourism side of the business. Although I was genuinely excited about the whole thing, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a certain amount of, shall we say, nervous energy building up the evening before. Karen was, if anything, managing to be even more nervous than me, which I found simultaneously reassuring and completely unhelpful. So when we woke up on the morning of the dive and got ourselves ready, we were both sporting what you might diplomatically call an air of trepidation. Fine. We were scared. It’s fine.
We arrived at the Marine Dynamics office at Kleinbaai harbour at around 9:30 in the morning to get ourselves registered and sit through the safety and operational briefing. It turned out we were going to be a fairly large group — around 30 people in total, which surprised us a bit, though the boat was perfectly capable of handling everyone. As we sat in the briefing room waiting for proceedings to get underway, Karen got chatting to a young man from Johannesburg who was on a holiday he’d apparently been instructed to take by his boss, which struck us both as a perfectly good reason to find yourself on a shark cage diving boat in the Western Cape. Like us, he was ticking this off his bucket list, and like us, he was doing a decent impression of someone who was entirely relaxed about the whole business. Breakfast was laid on for everyone, which was a nice touch, but it’s fair to say that the mood in the room was not exactly one of ravenous enthusiasm — there was no great rush to load up the plates. Something about the prospect of being in a submerged metal cage in the vicinity of large predatory fish seems to mildly affect one’s appetite. Strange, that.
After the briefing we all trooped downstairs to be fitted with our lifejackets before making the short walk down to Kleinbaai Harbour, where we boarded our boat — which, it has to be said, looked considerably more modest in the flesh than it had in the brochure photographs. We reminded ourselves that Marine Dynamics have been doing this for over two decades without incident and tried to look confident.
It was a 15-minute ride out to the area off Geyser Rock where we would be taking our somewhat unconventional dip, and the sea conditions were, mercifully, reasonable — the swell was manageable, and the skies had helpfully cleared overnight so that visibility on the surface of the water was quite good. The boat pulled up to position, the steel cage was lowered over the side and secured to the hull, and we were handed our wetsuits. Getting into a wetsuit with 30 other people on a gently rolling boat with approximately the floor space of a suburban kitchen is a comedic experience that I would recommend to anyone who needs reminding that travel is fundamentally humbling. Eventually, through a combination of determination and undignified wriggling, we were all togged up, and the crew began ladling what can only be described as an extremely pungent oily fish soup into the water to attract the sharks. Chumming, it’s called. It is not a pleasant aroma.
The cage itself holds between eight and nine people at a time in fairly close quarters — this is not the moment to discover you have issues with personal space. The cage is entirely enclosed and very solid, so you are perfectly safe as long as you resist any inexplicable urge to stick a limb through the bars, which the briefing had been quite emphatic about. Once a group is loaded in, the roof section is lowered into place. Inside, there are two horizontal bars running the length of the cage. The lower one provides a footrest, keeping your head above water — which is, it turns out, rather important given that there is no scuba equipment involved whatsoever. No snorkel, no tank, nothing. You’re breathing air like a normal person; you just happen to be standing in a cage in the Atlantic Ocean. The upper bar is what you grab and use to haul yourself below the surface when the command comes. Once the sharks arrived — and the crew used lures on long lines to draw them in towards the cage — two crew members on the boat deck would shout instructions when a shark was approaching, and you’d pull yourself under and hold your breath for as long as the shark remained in view.
Now, here we need to address something rather sad, because the story of Gansbaai’s great white sharks has taken a genuinely unexpected turn in recent years. For decades, the area around Shark Alley was one of the most reliable places in the world to see large female great whites — some of them five metres or more in length. Then, around 2017 and 2018, a pair of orcas arrived in the area. Orcas, as it turns out, have developed a remarkably specific and, from the shark’s point of view, absolutely appalling habit of targeting great white sharks and eating their livers — apparently a particularly nutritious delicacy if you happen to be a killer whale. Several great white sharks washed up dead on the beaches around Gansbaai in a relatively short period, all with their livers surgically removed, which is as grim as it sounds. And while sharks are not generally celebrated for their intellect, they are apparently smart enough to recognise when a location has become distinctly unhealthy for them. The local great white population essentially upped sticks and moved, and great whites are now rarely, if ever, seen on the cage diving tours from Gansbaai. We found this genuinely sad — for us obviously, but more significantly for the sharks and for the long-term viability of the industry that has supported the local community for three decades. On our dive, the sharks that came in were copper sharks — also known as bronze whalers — athletic, streamlined animals of around two metres in length that put on a genuinely impressive show, coming so close to the bars of the cage that you could see every detail, and we were absolutely thrilled to have the experience. But the absence of great whites hung over the day a little.
We had decided to hang back and let the first group go in ahead of us, reasoning that watching from the boat would give us a feel for how it all worked before we committed ourselves. It also gave Karen an additional few minutes to practice looking relaxed, which she did with limited success. The first group dived in, the copper sharks duly appeared and put on a brilliant display, and it all looked manageable enough. Then it was our turn. Climbing down over the side of a gently bobbing boat into a submerged cage is a clumsier operation than you’d imagine, but the crew were patient and experienced and everyone made it in without incident. The cold hit us immediately — the water around Gansbaai sits at around 14 or 15 degrees Celsius at this time of year, fed by the cold Benguela Current that sweeps up from the Antarctic, and while the wetsuits did a good job of insulating us, the initial shock was quite something. After about 30 seconds of sharp intake of breath, however, it settled to a perfectly tolerable chill and we found our feet on the lower bar. And then the sharks came. Every time a crew member on the deck shouted “Shark left!” or “Shark right!” we grabbed the upper bar and pulled ourselves under, eyes wide open, watching a large copper shark slide through the blue-grey water a matter of inches from the cage. Within a couple of dives you genuinely did get into a rhythm with it, and it was absolutely brilliant fun. We were very lucky because, in addition to the copper sharks, an absolutely enormous stingray — and when I say enormous, I mean the wingspan on this thing was something to behold — swam right up to the cage and hovered in front of us for what felt like a genuinely magical couple of minutes. Climbing back out of the cage when our time was up was one of the more reluctant things either of us has done on a trip.
When everyone had had their turn it was time to head back to shore. Getting out of wet, clingy wetsuits while a boat is moving is, if anything, an even more undignified experience than getting into them had been, so we elected to keep ours on for the return journey and change when we were back on dry land — a decision that proved entirely correct. And then, on the way back into harbour, we were treated to an extraordinary bonus: a young southern right whale breaching repeatedly alongside the boat, launching itself almost clear of the water and crashing back down in an explosion of spray that had everyone on deck scrambling for their cameras. You could not have scripted a better end to the morning. Once back on land we located a shower and got changed, by which point most of our fellow divers had already demolished the hot soup and bread that Marine Dynamics provided as a post-dive warmer. Thankfully, there was still some left for us, and never has a bowl of soup been more welcome.
🏖️ Klipgat Cave — Worth the Slippery Walk (Mostly)
I had read about a set of sea caves at a beach called Klipgat, just north of Gansbaai, and thought they were worth a look while we were in the area. Klipgat Cave is actually a site of considerable archaeological significance — excavations carried out by researchers from the South African Museum beginning in the 1990s revealed evidence of Middle Stone Age occupation dating back some 80,000 years, including shellfish middens, stone tools and the remains of fires, making this one of the earlier known sites of sustained human coastal habitation anywhere in the world. The beach itself sits within the Walker Bay Nature Reserve, which is managed by Cape Nature and covers around 1,100 hectares of coastal fynbos, dune fields and shoreline between Gansbaai and Hermanus. Because it’s a nature reserve, there’s a small entrance fee payable at the gate, which we were happy enough to pay. After the gate it was a short drive to the car park, from which the beach is accessed via a flight of steps that leads you down through the cliff face to a small, beautifully sheltered cove below. When we arrived, there were only four other people on the entire beach, which is one of those moments that makes you feel you’ve found something properly special. The caves were a short distance along the base of the cliff from the main beach, across some rocks — not a long scramble by any means, but with the tide coming in with some enthusiasm, it was a decidedly slippery business. I made it across and had a good look, while Karen, who has what she describes as “a sensible relationship with risk” and what I describe as “better balance than me,” decided she didn’t fancy the odds of getting soaked and waited on the safer rocks. To be entirely honest with you, the caves were fine. Pleasant, even. But they are perhaps better appreciated for their archaeological context than their visual drama — they are not, say, the Fingal’s Cave end of the cave spectrum. Before leaving we found a spot in the sunshine — it had turned into a lovely afternoon by this point — and sat for a while listening to the waves and being very glad we’d made the detour.
🌊 Beachcombing — When Swimming Is Not the Wisest Plan
There are some genuinely beautiful beaches along the coastline between Hermanus and Gansbaai, and on a sunny day the Western Cape scenery here is as dramatic and striking as anything we’d seen in South Africa. However, swimming along this stretch is a rather different proposition to your average beach holiday dip. The coastline sits where the cold Benguela Current meets the warmer Agulhas Current, creating powerful and unpredictable rip currents and surges that make bathing actively treacherous in many spots, and local advice was pretty clear that casual swimming was best avoided. This was not, as Karen pointed out, entirely consistent with the fact that we’d spent the morning willingly climbing into a cage in the sea, but context is everything.
The excellent alternative is to take to the rocky shoreline instead, which is absolutely perfect for a proper beachcomb and a nose around the rock pools. The intertidal zone along this stretch of coast is extraordinarily rich — the cold, nutrient-dense upwelling of the Benguela Current makes these waters among the most productive in the Southern Hemisphere, and the rock pools reflect that abundance. Starfish, sea anemones, various species of crab, limpets, periwinkles, whelks and all manner of other creatures go about their business in the shallow pools left by the retreating tide, and you could spend a very happy couple of hours poking around without covering much ground at all. We did exactly that, and it was a thoroughly satisfying way to spend an afternoon.
🐋 Whale Watching — Giants of Walker Bay
Whale watching is one of the great wildlife experiences of the entire Western Cape, and the Gansbaai and Hermanus coastline sits at the heart of it. The southern right whale — so named because 19th-century whalers regarded it as the “right” whale to hunt, being slow, buoyant when dead, and rich in oil — was hunted to near extinction during the great whaling era, with the global population estimated to have crashed to somewhere between 300 and 1,000 animals by the early 20th century. International whaling protections, the most significant of which came with the International Whaling Commission’s moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, have allowed populations to slowly recover, and the southern right whale is now one of the great conservation success stories of the past century. The South African population, which calves along the Western Cape coastline, is thought to number several thousand animals and is growing at roughly seven per cent per year.
These magnificent creatures migrate to South African waters from their Antarctic feeding grounds each year, typically arriving in June and beginning the long journey home again at the end of November or early December. Walker Bay is one of their primary nursery grounds — the sheltered, relatively shallow waters provide the perfect environment for calves to develop strength before undertaking the southern migration. The peak time for sightings, when daily encounters are virtually guaranteed whether from land or from a boat, is during September and October, though whales can be seen throughout the June to December window. Humpback whales and Bryde’s whales are also spotted offshore, particularly on boat-based tours, but it is the southern right that dominates the spectacle here, often coming so close to shore that you can watch them from the clifftops with the naked eye.
Coming face to face with a southern right whale in its natural habitat, out on a boat with these animals breaching and spy-hopping and lobtailing around you, is an exhilarating experience that is genuinely hard to put adequate words to. However, if your sea legs aren’t reliably up to the job — and after the morning we’d had in the cage dive boat we felt we had earned some honesty about this — watching from the shoreline or from the cliff tops is still a fantastic and moving experience. We were very lucky, on our boat ride back from the cage dive, to have that young whale breaching alongside us, and we stood there with enormous grins on our faces feeling like the luckiest people on the water. Which we probably were.
The Best Time to Visit the Western Cape
The Western Cape operates on a Mediterranean climate cycle that turns the conventional travel-planning logic on its head: summer — December to February — brings long, sun-drenched days and reliably dry weather to Cape Town and the Winelands, while winter — June to August — delivers frontal Atlantic rain to the Cape Peninsula and the Boland. Understanding that rhythm is the most useful thing a visitor can bring to planning a trip, because each season has a strong case to make for itself.
🌸 September to November — Spring
Spring in the Western Cape is widely considered the single best time to visit, and for good reason. The rains of winter tail off, wildflowers — including the famous fynbos and the carpets of Namaqualand daisies visible on the edge of the region — reach their peak, and the first Southern Right whales of the season arrive in the sheltered bays around Hermanus and De Kelders to calve and nurse their young. Temperatures rise steadily through the season, from pleasantly mild in September to warm and energetic by November, with very little of the harsh South-Easter wind that can take the edge off Cape Town in high summer. Prices and crowds are noticeably below their December peak, and the general sense of the landscape coming alive after winter gives the whole region an energy that is difficult to match at any other time of year.
Packing: Light layers for the morning chill, a light waterproof jacket for any leftover winter squalls in September, breathable shirts and trousers for warmer October and November days, comfortable walking shoes for the Winelands and flower routes, and high-SPF sunscreen as the days lengthen.
☀️ December to February — Summer
This is Cape Town at its most confident and most crowded: long days of brilliant sunshine, sea temperatures warm enough for a swim at Clifton or Camps Bay, and a social scene that accelerates noticeably as South African domestic tourists join the international visitors. The Garden Route, Hermanus and the Overberg also hit their stride, and the national parks — Table Mountain, Boulders Beach, Cape Point — are all at their most accessible. The South-Easter, the strong south-easterly wind known locally as the Cape Doctor, is summer’s main characteristic: it scrubs the air clean and keeps temperatures from becoming oppressive, but on its fiercer days it can sweep your towel off Clifton Beach and make dining outdoors feel like an adventure. It is, unsurprisingly, the most expensive time to visit, with accommodation prices peaking between Christmas and mid-January and the main coastal resorts booking out well in advance.
Packing: Lightweight, breathable clothing, swimwear, a wide-brimmed hat, high-SPF reef-safe sunscreen, a windbreaker or light jacket for South-Easter afternoons, sunglasses, and sandals for the beach towns alongside a smarter pair for evenings out.
🍂 March to May — Autumn
Autumn brings some of the Western Cape’s most rewarding travel conditions. The South-Easter relents, temperatures ease to a comfortable 20–26°C and the light softens in a way that makes the Winelands and the Franschhoek Valley particularly beautiful. March and April coincide with the wine harvest, when estates are at their most active and many host harvest festivals, farm stalls and cellar-door tastings that feel more genuine than anything on offer in peak summer. Beaches see a fraction of the December crowds, accommodation rates drop perceptibly, and the Cape Peninsula’s hiking trails are far quieter. By May, the first frontal systems begin moving up from the south Atlantic and the weather becomes more changeable, but autumn, taken as a whole, offers an excellent balance of good conditions and relative quiet.
Packing: Layers that can be added or removed through the day — mornings and evenings cool noticeably by May — a light waterproof jacket, comfortable shoes suitable for walking vineyard paths and coastal trails, and sunscreen for the still-strong autumn sun.
🌧️ June to August — Winter
The Western Cape’s winter is mild by most standards — Cape Town rarely drops below 7 or 8°C even on its coldest nights — but it is emphatically the wet season, with Atlantic frontal systems rolling through every week or so and delivering sustained rain that can last for two or three days at a stretch. The Garden Route receives its heaviest rainfall of the year, some mountain passes close intermittently, and the whale-watching season is only just getting started by August. Against all of that, winter has a compelling case for budget-conscious travellers: hotel rates fall to their lowest, tourist numbers thin dramatically and Cape Town takes on a different, more local character. The wine estates are quiet, the souks of the Bo-Kaap are unhurried, and the Cape Peninsula in moody winter light, with clouds tearing across the top of Table Mountain, can be genuinely dramatic. Boulders Beach penguins remain as obliging as ever regardless of the season, and when the sun does break through between fronts, the clarity of the winter light is remarkable.
Packing: A proper waterproof jacket or rain mac, warm mid-layers for cooler evenings and wet days, waterproof walking shoes or boots, a compact umbrella, and at least one smarter warm layer — restaurants and bars in Cape Town tend to be well heated, but the walk between them is not.
Overall Best Time
September to November offers the most consistently rewarding conditions for the widest range of activities — whale-watching, wildflowers, hiking, wine-tasting and beach days can all be combined in a single itinerary without the peak-season prices or the South-Easter’s unpredictability. Travellers for whom cost and crowd levels matter more than guaranteed sunshine will find autumn, particularly March and April, a close rival: the harvest season adds genuine character to a Winelands visit, the weather remains warm and settled, and the Cape Peninsula feels spacious in a way it never quite does in December. Summer is the obvious choice for those whose priority is beach time and long evenings, provided they book well in advance and come prepared for the wind. Winter alone requires a particular temperament — or a particularly good reason, such as catching the start of the whale season — but for the right traveller, it rewards handsomely.
Where to stay in Gansbaai
1. Platbos Forest Cabins
Platbos Forest offers self-catering accommodation in an indigenous forest found on the Baviaanspoort Hills in Gansbaai. This ancient forest has trees that date back over 1000 years in age. This endangered and rare ecosystem is one of a kind and worth the visit.
Our cabin was in a small opening with a fire pit and a separate bathroom. To call this a cabin was misleading as all the walls were canvas, which you could roll up so the space was completely open to the elements. The weather didn’t really suit that so we just opened one panel. The ‘cabins’ are totally off-grid, so we had solar-powered lights, a gas stove for cooking and wood burning stove for heat. All this said the ‘cabin’ was cosy and with some lovely wooden furniture and was very spacious.
2. EGRETS` ĂRK
Set in Gansbaai, 1.3 km from Romansbaai Beach, EGRETS’ ĂRK is a characterful self-catering villa that strikes a good balance between comfort and proximity to everything the Whale Coast has to offer. The property comes with a shared lounge, free WiFi and a shared kitchen, and there’s free private parking on site — which matters when you’re planning to drive yourself around this stretch of coastline. The villa itself has three bedrooms, a living room with a flat-screen TV, a fully equipped kitchen with fridge and oven, and three bathrooms, each with a shower. A terrace looks out over the garden, and the surrounding area is well suited to active guests, with hiking, windsurfing and diving all available nearby. Fishing and canoeing can be enjoyed within easy reach of the property, and a car rental service and private beach area are also available on-site for guests who want to make the most of the coastline without straying too far.
3. Whale Sea Cottage
Set in Gansbaai just 1.2 km from Stanford’s Bay, Whale Sea Cottage is a spacious beachfront villa that puts you about as close to the action — both the ocean and the wildlife — as it’s possible to get without actually sleeping on a boat. The property has four bedrooms, making it a solid option for families or small groups travelling together, along with a fully equipped kitchen with microwave and fridge, a comfortable seating area, a flat-screen TV and three bathrooms. Outside, there’s an outdoor swimming pool for the days when the Atlantic is looking a little too bracing for an actual swim, plus a terrace and garden where you can sit and watch the light change over the water in the evenings. Free WiFi and free private parking are both included, and the balcony is a genuinely lovely spot from which to scan the bay for the southern right whales that pass through Walker Bay between June and December.
More to Explore
