Cliff Path and Whale Watching

About this place

A seaside town on Walker Bay that ranks among the world's best places for land-based whale watching, as southern right whales come within a few metres of the rocks, so visitors see them without a boat, breaching and slapping the water with their tails. Each year the whales arrive from polar waters to calve and nurse their young in the bay's calm water, from roughly June to November, with numbers peaking in September and October. A whale festival is held in the town in late September. The Cliff Path runs about twelve kilometres along the rocky coast, with benches, viewpoints and information boards among fynbos and tidal pools. You can walk just part of it and stop wherever people gather to watch the whales. Walking the path is free, and licensed boat trips leave from the old harbour to get closer to the whales. The town is a day trip from Cape Town, about an hour and a half by car.