Oh I do want to be beside the seaside of St Francis Bay

St Francis Bay

Set on the shores of the Indian Ocean, just south of Jeffreys Bay in the Eastern Cape, St Francis Bay has to be one of the most beau­ti­ful spaces on this part of the coast. We arrived there on a wind-swept after­noon know­ing little about the pretty resort but that we had man­aged to nab ourselves a cot­tage with sea views within walk­ing dis­tance of the beach!

We arrived in the vil­lage in the late after­noon, tired from our jour­ney and gasp­ing for a day or so of sun-filled beach time, as we had just des­cen­ded from the Amatola Mountains and the little town of Hogsback, where it had been rather chilly to say the least ...

My first impres­sion of St Francis Bay was its strong con­trast with Hogsback's sim­pli­city and its obvi­ous role as the play­ground of the very wealthy dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. The roads were dom­in­ated by very large, pre­dom­in­antly sil­ver, util­ity vehicles from all over the coun­try, and the water­ways of the Marina Glades and the seas by large, recently acquired power boats.

St Francis Bay

Despite this over-abundance of opu­lence, St Francis Bay and the Marina are incred­ibly beau­ti­ful, and man­age to give a low-key, less gar­ish impres­sion than their neigh­bours – Santareme, St Francis-on-sea and Port St Francis – due to strict archi­tec­tural reg­u­la­tions that observe white walls and thatch roofs throughout.

In fact, it's rather amus­ing to drive through the neigh­bour­hood and see how Harbour Road forms a bound­ary – on one side are the pretty, white-walled, thatched cot­tage style man­sions, whilst on the other Santareme's Spanish 'theme' means that a series of Spanish look­ing vil­las, in vari­ous shades of ter­ra­cotta and peach, predominate.

A little fur­ther along a barely dis­cern­ible Portuguese theme takes over in St Francis-on-Sea, and so it con­tin­ues. Only Cape St Francis has man­aged to side-step any archi­tec­tural reg­u­la­tions, although it is such a mish mash of archi­tec­tural styles, that one rather wishes it had, par­tic­u­larly when com­pared with the other suburbs.

St Francis Bay

Our first after­noon was spent, des­pite the wind, in a glor­i­ous whirl of sea­side activ­it­ies that involved much swim­ming, wave jump­ing and dig­ging of castles with intric­ate moats. Along the beach strolled fam­il­ies with their chil­dren, couples with their dogs, and young­sters in groups, suss­ing out the talent.

On my brave pas­sage into the sea I passed an old man and his dog and we swopped notes on the water tem­per­at­ure. He swims both morn­ing and even­ing when at the coast, and I admired his per­sever­ance and enter­tained the romantic notion that when I'm his age I will do the same?

Day two dawned over­cast. Whilst we were a little dis­heartened at not being able to imme­di­ately head down for a swim, we were soon glad for the change in weather meant that we ven­tured out to explore. The first place we uncovered was the St Francis Community Garden, where a sign say­ing 'Santa's Elves' meant an oblig­at­ory stop – our son was in hot pursuit!

Community Garden

We were soon in con­ver­sa­tion with Brigid, a volun­teer at the garden, who, des­pite hav­ing only moved to Santareme less than a year pre­vi­ously, had acquired an extens­ive know­ledge of the area and its envir­on­mental pro­jects. Whilst Santa had not yet put in an appear­ance (he was only to do so the fol­low­ing week, when we were already back in Cape Town), we were invited to attend a pen­guin release just across from the gar­dens in front of the St Francis Heritage (envir­on­mental) Centre near Granny's Pool, a safe and rather quaint tidal pool at which chil­dren were already playing.

Brigid went on to describe how she watched a fam­ily of whales recently in the bay and how dol­phins visit the beaches on a daily basis (she wasn't wrong, I was to spot them twice that day!). She regaled us to a rather inter­est­ing story of how St Francis Bay is deal­ing with beach erosion using a reclam­a­tion sys­tem known as PEM, intro­duced by the Danes that involves a series of rows of tubes in the shal­low water just below the seabed. These increase the cir­cu­la­tion of sea­wa­ter and deposit sand broughtt in by the surf, slowly widen­ing the beach. She poin­ted to what we had thought was a shark spot­ter, but turned out to be someone mon­it­or­ing the tubes. Interesting to say the least.

Penguin release

Penguin Rescue and Rehabilitation let the loc­als know when they intend releas­ing a group of rehab­il­it­ated pen­guins. By 11am the crowds had grown and were three-deep along the side of the pool, wait­ing for the little fel­lows to make an appear­ance. Before long, they were brought onto the beach in crates, and roughly 20 of them hes­it­ated only long enough to estab­lish that this was indeed the sea, before head­ing off, heads above the water until they reached the open sea, where they soon vanished.

It was an incred­ibly mov­ing exper­i­ence to watch the pen­guins leave. It seems they know, without being told, exactly where they're going and most of them end up on a series of seal islands off Madiba Bay. We were one of many who bought a pen­guin t-shirt on sale, the pro­ceeds of which go towards help­ing the penguins.

By this time, the sun was again out and we headed for the mar­ina to drive around the quiet roads, where almost every 'cot­tage' has a water­side loc­a­tion and boats lie bob­bing just bey­ond their front lawns, some of which also have swim­ming pools.

Back in the vil­lage, beach activ­ity had picked up and we chose a spot safely out of the way of the rising tide. The area close to our cot­tage had life guards, who took a 'tea break', when most of the fam­il­ies fled the beach at lunch time, by snug­gling up under their anor­aks on the rocks and tak­ing a nap. We vir­tu­ally had the place to ourselves and swim­ming here was simply deli­cious. I wish only that we'd had longer than two days to spend in this won­der­fully lazy way.

Useful St Francis Bay Links:
St Francis Bay Info & Attractions
St Francis Bay Accommodation
Sunshine Coast Accommodation
Eastern Cape Accommodation