Hours, prices and access verified by the Boulders Beach Tours team — last checked 2026-09-11
The colony, the boardwalk, the cove and the road that carries you there. Every
photograph comes from the operators who run the Boulders Beach penguins tour in these listings.
What a photograph of Boulders shows and a description does not is the scale of the granite.
The boulders are worn round and they are enormous, and the birds move between them at knee
height, a few metres from a raised walkway. That closeness is the whole reason the boardwalk
exists: it lets a thousand people a day look at a Critically Endangered species without walking
into its nests.
The second half of the set is the road. Almost every guided day pairs the colony with
Chapman's Peak, Hout Bay, Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope, so those frames show what the
hours between the stops actually look like. Simon's Town, the naval town five minutes above the
reserve, is where most of them stop for lunch.
Captions say what is in the frame and stop. The listings' own photo shelves also carry lions,
elephants, a shark cage and a winelands lunch. None of those is part of a Boulders day and none
appears below.
The boardwalk above the African penguin colony at Boulders BeachA single African penguin walking the wet sand between two granite bouldersAfrican penguins standing on the sand at Boulders Beach at sunsetThe sheltered cove at Boulders Beach, penguins scattered across the white sandAfrican penguins on the sand beside the granite bouldersThe penguin colony spread among the boulders above the tidelineThe Boulders Beach colony spread across the sandAfrican penguins on the beach below the granite bouldersA long line of African penguins walking the sand at the water's edgeAfrican penguins standing in the shallows between the rocksAfrican penguins at the water's edge on a bright afternoonPenguins picking their way among the boulders at the edge of the coveAn African penguin sheltering under a granite overhangAn African penguin at its nest in the coastal scrub behind the beachA group of African penguins standing together on the sandAfrican penguins preening on the rocks above the waterThree African penguins standing on a rock in the sunTwo African penguins bill to bill in the coastal scrubA pair of African penguins close up, the pink gland above the eye visibleAn African penguin standing on the sand, facing the cameraThe main street of Simon's Town, the naval town above Boulders BeachThe painted bathing huts at Muizenberg, on the False Bay coast roadChapman's Peak Drive cut into the cliff above the AtlanticThe cliffs above Chapman's Peak Drive dropping to the seaFishing boats in Hout Bay harbour below the mountainHout Bay and its beach seen from the cliff roadThe old Cape Point lighthouse on its ridge above the oceanThe Cape Point peninsula running out into the seaThe headland at Cape Point from above, the surf breaking along its edgeThe beach and cliffs inside the Cape of Good Hope section of the reserveA Table Mountain Aerial Cableway car climbing the face of the mountain
