To boldly go... why swimming with the penguins at Boulders is so great

Penguins at Boulders

Nothing quite beats the thrill of swim­ming at Boulders beach with the pen­guins. Admittedly Sunday's rather busy rash of vis­it­ors to the pop­u­lar but small beach meant that only one little black and white res­id­ent was bold enough to brave the crowds in the main cove of Boulders. But ven­ture a little fur­ther, through the 'crack in the wall', and there are pen­guins galore that are quite happy to share their space, provided you main­tain a respect­able distance.

It's just as well that Boulders is a pay­ing beach or it would be inund­ated. Even though it now costs R35 an adult and R10 a child, the beach is still one of the most pop­u­lar swim­ming beaches on the False Bay Coast for people with chil­dren, as it's without fail sheltered from the wind, and vir­tu­ally always a calm pond-like swim­ming exper­i­ence for bathers ...

Try and avoid week­ends if you can, as the crowds def­in­itely res­ult in fewer encoun­ters of the wad­dling kind.

Penguins at Boulders

The beach appar­ently lim­its the num­ber of vis­it­ors to the beach (just as well as crowds like that on Sunday must surely inter­fere with the pen­guins breed­ing pro­gramme), park­ing is pretty restric­ted, and car guards' par­ti­cip­a­tion in loc­at­ing a spot for you, vir­tu­ally nonexistent.

Boulders beach lies just out­side Simon's Town on the far side of False Bay and des­pite the fact that this is sup­posed to mean warmer waters, the sea is pretty icy, par­tic­u­larly as sum­mer wanes.

However, the little bay is so con­dus­ive to swim­ming that chil­dren and adults pretty much ignore their chilling extremit­ies for the joys of snor­kelling and float­ing in calm, gor­geously blue waters.

Penguins at Boulders

Finding a spot on the beach is of the utmost import­ance, and if you leave your arrival time to after 11am you'll pos­sibly struggle. There are a couple of shady spots if you're pre­pared to snuggle up to the top edge of the beach or the 'stair­way to nowhere' towards the middle of the beach, and you'll need an umbrella if you're going to stay for the long haul.

However, if you're smart and have packed stra­tegic­ally (which means you can simply swing your haver­sack onto your back and eas­ily man­oeuvre your­self up and down boulders, umbrella and all!) then slip­ping through a crack in the boulders on the far side of the beach to make your way to a series of other coves is well worth it. Here there are fewer people, more pen­guins, and a lot more peace and quiet.

The sand is per­fect for sand­castles, the huge boulders for which the beach is obvi­ously named provide won­der­ful scram­bling oppor­tun­it­ies, the water behaves itself impec­cably – not even a rough wave to dis­lodge people from their tow­els – and the wind, well, what wind? On the whole, the wind doesn't blow in this pro­tec­ted cove, which is prob­ably why it is so pop­u­lar. It's one of very few spots in Cape Town where your umbrella actu­ally remains upright.

Penguins at Boulders

As for the little black and white wad­dlers. They're African pen­guins, also known as jack­ass pen­guins for the bray­ing don­key noise they're sup­posed to make (although there was little of that on the beach this past week­end given com­pet­i­tion with a gang load of human beings) and this is the only place in the world where you can swim in amongst them, or rather, they can choose to swim in amongst you.

Capetonian or vis­itor, the appeal is no less thrill­ing. Simon's Town is one of only 28 sites world­wide (you can also see them in Kommetjie and occa­sion­ally at Cape Point and Robben Island) where this par­tic­u­lar pen­guin occurs at all and Boulders is espe­cially unique because the pen­guins selec­ted the spot them­selves, in the early 1980s, des­pite its being the middle of sub­ur­bia and a pub­lic swim­ming beach.

Whilst local res­id­ents are not all as joy­ously enthu­si­astic about the pen­guins as vis­it­ors to the beach (get down­wind of them and you soon dis­cover that 'good house­keep­ing' is not one of their strengths) the birds are flour­ish­ing. What I didn't know is that this is due in no small way to a man known as 'Van the pen­guin man' who regards him­self as some­thing of a bene­factor of the little sea birds, and has played a huge part in con­flict res­ol­u­tion between local res­id­ents and the birds.

Penguins at Boulders

If you want a guided tour of the pen­guins at Boulders with Van, con­tact Grete at Boulder Beach Guesthouse — phone him on 082 921 5724. Some of what you will learn from him includes the fact that pen­guins' fossil records indic­ate that they were already well estab­lished some 50 mil­lion years ago and that some pre­his­toric pen­guins stood as tall as 1.5 metres and must have weighed around 100 kg – good thing that they're not quite as big today!

The pen­guins appear to have little dis­crim­in­a­tion when it comes to where they're pre­pared to set up home, and you'll find them all over the show — under bushes, on the board­walk, around the side of boulders — and they've adop­ted a non­chal­ant atti­tude towards humans, either ignor­ing us com­pletely or snap­ping at our heels if we get too close for com­fort; so don't even think about touch­ing them ... but they're pretty much laid­back on the whole.

Penguins at Boulders

If you're here to view the pen­guins, rather than enjoy the beach, then stick to the board­walks that lead behind the beach and over the dunes as this way you'll head to the heart of the colony. Although in this way you only see them wad­dling about on land, when it is the water that is their ele­ment, and watch­ing them effort­lessly dart in and out whilst gath­er­ing speed in the water is to see them where they belong.

Best time to go: dur­ing the week or very early or late (around 5pm) in the day, as the beaches are far less crowded and you feel part of the scenery, tol­er­ated by the pen­guins rather than vice versa.

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