Recently I was fortunate to visit the small empty fishing village called Arniston, which is at the southern tip of the African continent. If you look at a map, you will see the actual southern tip of Africa is called Cape Aughulas. And just next to it is the village of Arniston. It’s the emptiest village I have ever seen, since it’s so remote and basically full of empty holiday houses.
As a fishing resort, folks come here for fishing holidays. The rest of the time out of season, 95% of the houses appear to be locked up and empty. There is one hotel where you will find the one and only shop in the village. It’s not even a shop but more of a kiosk, with the bare essentials.
The older name for the town is Waenhuiskraans, which is the vernacular Afrikaans language – a derivative of Dutch. The first settlers at the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town) were Dutch sailors on their way to India. Their trade route brought them around the south of the African continent and they made it a refreshment station for the Dutch East India Company, who sailed from Europe to India and back to trade.
It's just a stone’s throw away from the actual southernmost tip of the African continent, called Cape Aughulas, as you can see on the map. And the village of Arniston appears to be the closest actual town to that point called Cape Aughulas. So, as you can see, there is nothing happening here at this remote part of the planet. It may be one of the most remote places on earth, in one sense.
I went for a walk on the beach around sunrise and was able to capture a few photos of the place with the warm and pleasant sunrise lighting. I presume the village fills up over the summer holiday season, as folks come to stay in their holiday houses or at the camp site. There is actually a part of the village that has permanent local residents in the lower economic bracket, somewhat removed from this upmarket seaside suburb that you can see in my photos. They must be struggling to survive since there is no work here, nothing to do and no economic activity.
So the place is pleasant to look at and visit for a holiday, but other than that, there is little to attract people here. Unless you love fishing I presume. The closest town for shops and general amenities is called Bredasdorp, which is about 20 minutes drive away. If you want to be far from civilization then this is the place for you. It has a nice symbolic ring to say that I was at the southernmost tip of Africa, but other than that token badge, there is little else to gain from this place.
At least I can add the place to my list of explored extreme places on the map. And I like beaches so it was another one to add to my list of world beaches that I have visited. I like to compare them to each other and list them as best beaches in the world. Cape Town, where I was born and raised, is not far away to the west, and it has some quality beaches, and the Garden Route, about 450km to the east of here also has some world class blue flag beaches.
And Thailand also naturally rates at the top of my list of favorite beach settings. Arniston may be a little lower down the list, since I’m not a fisherman, like my grandfather was. He apparently used to come here when I was a kid, as he liked to explore fishing areas along the Cape coast.
You can see on the beach some washed up seaweed, of the sort that is popular at the Cape Town beaches, though more on the colder Atlantic ocean side. Here we are already at the Indian ocean waters, but the seaweeds presumably range all along this coast. You wont find them further up the coast to the east though. The water probably warms up as one moves further east.
It’s just that here at this tip of Africa, you have the convergence of the cold Atlantic ocean with the warm Indian ocean. This is basically the spot where they meet. Some people say the meeting is at Cape Point in the city of Cape Town just nearby to the west, and some people say that Cape Aughulas – the southern tip of the continent – is the meeting place of the two oceans. I presume it’s somewhere between the two. However, growing up in Cape Town, the temperature of the sea water was definitely noticeably colder on the Atlantic side of town, compared to the Indian ocean side of town.
It is possible to visit beaches on one side of the Cape peninsula, which are much warmer for swimming, while the other side is seriously cold for swimming. So it’s an observable fact that the two oceans meet here. These long seaweeds that wash up on Arniston beach suggest to me that there is some overlap, as one would expect with ocean currents.
The ground cover vegetation, however, is all the same Fynbos Floral Kingdom that one can find stretching all along this southern coast of Africa, from Cape Town and up the west coast, all the way to the Garden Route about 550km east of Cape Town.
If you want to visit the southernmost tip of the African continent, then feel free to do so, and add it to your list of achievements, but if not then don’t worry. You can simply enjoy these photos of the place and see what it looks like.
(photos my own)