Best Well-Hidden Spot
Amongst the few remaining, picturesque Cape fishing villages, Time Magazine has featured Arniston/Waenhuiskrans as one of the best well-hidden spots in the world. A short beach walk (go at low tide) across rock pools takes you to the tip of a low headland and into a huge wave-carved cavern.
Much of the rugged coast along the southern Cape from Cape Agulhas to De Hoop is made up of these limestone raised beaches, which have subsequently been worked on by erosive wave action. Illis is the Waenhuiskrans (wagon-house cliff) which you have to enter and exit through a crawl hole when the water is rising. Much of the seashore around South Africa, where it is not sandy beach or rocky shore, is comprised of low crumbly cliffs.
These are really fossilised raised beaches, formed as the sea level dropped (or, alternately, as the land rose). At Arniston, you can access the cave at low tide via an intertidal platform, and crawl through a wormhole to get into the main cavern.
By David Bristow
Arniston is a small seaside town in the Overberg region on the Cape South coast, close to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa. Afte...