Rooi Els

Rooi Els sits on the shore of False Bay about 70 kilometres southeast of Cape Town, accessed via Clarence Drive — the R44 that hugs the coastline from Gordon's Bay toward Hermanus. That road is the main reason to make the trip. It is one of the most dramatic short drives in the Western Cape, cutting along cliffs above the bay with the Hottentots Holland mountains rising steeply on one side and the sea directly below. Rooi Els is at the end of it, just before the road turns inland at Betty's Bay.

The village itself is small. Very small. A handful of houses, gravel tracks, no streetlights, no shops. It sits inside the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve, which means the surrounding fynbos is protected and development is minimal. The Kogelberg is one of the most botanically diverse areas on earth — a fact that takes a moment to land but that you understand when you look at the hillsides above the village. The diversity of fynbos species in this reserve surpasses almost anywhere else in the Cape Floristic Region.

The water at Rooi Els is cold. False Bay gets false credit as the warm side, and it is warmer than the Atlantic, but this close to the Hangklip headland the water can be brisk. That said, there are accessible rocky shore pools, good snorkelling, and the kind of beach access that requires no car park, no fee, and no crowd. Whales come through the bay regularly in season — southern rights calving in False Bay from July to October.

Betty's Bay, three kilometres along the road, has the penguin colony at Stony Point, a small shop, and slightly more infrastructure. Most people treat them as a pair.