Popular Tourist Attraction
Kommetjie is a popular bird watching post, with many areas designated just for bird spotting. The Kom Area, Long Beach and Klein Slangkop are the more popular spots for birding. The area also has popular biking routes that go all the way down to the famous Cape Point Reserve.
There are many hiking routes; a more popular one is the 5-day Hoerikwaggo Trail that goes from Cape Point to Cape Town City.
Imhoff farm offers a fun day for the whole family with a restaurant and petting zoo that is always a delight for the children. There are a variety of local restaurants to choose from too.
Because we’re accustomed to seeing them, Chacma baboons are a completely underrated wildlife encounter. But take a three-hour walk with Baboon Matters through the fynbos on the Cape Peninsula into the baboons home territory and you'll realise why overseas tourists rate the experience as equal to seeing mountain gorillas.
Look out for Masiphumelele, where you experience an interactive walk-in township tour and Ocean View on the opposite side of the road, which also offers insightful walking tours of the fishing community that lives there.
Shipwrecks to Explore
The coastline at Slangkop in Kommetjie has many reefs and headlands that stretch far out into the ocean resulting in huge waves that have wrecked many a fine vessel. Within walking distance from the lighthouse are 3 graves. They are the graves of sailors believed to have come from the wreck of the SS Maori. There are a few shipwrecks to explore and discover many adventures of untold stories.
The more famous vessels to explore that have to come to grief in this area, are the SS Kakapo that ran ashore on the southern end of Chapman’s Bay in 1900 during a northwest gale; the SS Clan Munroe that wrecked a little to the north of the lighthouse in 1905; the Oakburn that wrecked on Duiker Point in 1906 in thick fog (two crew members drowned); and the SS Maori that wrecked in thick fog in 1909 (32 lives were lost).
The Slangkop Lighthouse has seen all of the most dangerously high and rough seas along the stretch of the Atlantic coast. Many a victim in t...