Fish Hoek

Lia and I ended up in Fish Hoek almost by accident, driving the coast road from Muizenberg toward Simon’s Town and stopping because the bay looked too calm to pass up. That’s the thing about Fish Hoek — the beach curves long and gentle, sheltered enough that the water barely moves compared to the swells we’d fought through further up the coast. I understood immediately why this became the family beach of the Peninsula. There’s a stillness to it, a sense that generations of Capetonian kids learned to swim on this exact stretch of sand.

What surprised me was learning Fish Hoek was dry until the early 2000s — no alcohol sold in town for most of its history. Sitting at a beachfront café with a beer in hand now, it’s hard to picture, but there’s something almost charming about it, like the town has kept a residual wholesomeness even after the rule lifted. We had fish and chips from a spot near the parking lot, nothing fancy, and watched a lifeguard scan the water with binoculars, which led us up to Elsie’s Peak the next morning.

That’s where the Shark Spotters come in, and honestly it changed how I thought about swimming in False Bay entirely. Since 2004, volunteers have sat up on that peak watching for the dark shapes of great whites moving through the shallows, flagging swimmers with a siren and color-coded system before anyone’s even aware there’s a risk. Lia and I climbed up to say hello to the spotter on duty, and the view alone — the whole bay laid out, Fish Hoek’s beach a pale crescent below — was worth the walk.

We finished the afternoon on Jager’s Walk, the coastal path that hugs the rocks from the beach toward Sunny Cove. It’s a short, easy walk, but the kind where you keep stopping every few minutes because the light on the water changes or a cormorant dives right in front of you.

When to go: Aim for the warmer months between November and March, when False Bay settles into its calmest, clearest swimming conditions — though I’d still glance up at Elsie’s Peak before wading in.