Where Boulders Beach Is, and Which Gate to Use

Boulders is not one entrance. It is a section of Table Mountain National Park with three of them, and which one you walk through decides whether you see a colony, swim among granite, or park the car. Forty kilometres of False Bay coast separate it from the city, and every Boulders Beach tour from Cape Town listing covers that road.

Boulders Beach is in Simon's Town, 40 km down the False Bay coast

The address is Kleintuin Road, Simon's Town, Cape Town 7975, on the eastern, False Bay side of the Cape Peninsula. Simon's Town is the South African Navy's home port, a long single street of Victorian shopfronts pressed between the mountain and the water, and the reserve sits at its southern end. Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope are about forty minutes further on, which is why almost every guided day pairs them.

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Three gates, one reserve

Which gate your tour uses

All of them use Foxy Beach, because that is where the boardwalk is and because a coach or a minibus needs the car park at the top of Kleintuin Road. A guided day drops you at the gate and collects you there, which removes both the parking and the walk.

Where the fares differ is the conservation fee. Some of the tours here name every park entrance in their own inclusions; several sell a fee-inclusive grade; the rest expect you to pay at the gate. That is set out per tour on hours, fees and access.

Parking, and why the road fills by ten

There is a car park at the Foxy Beach entrance on Kleintuin Road and a second at Seaforth. Between them they hold a few hundred cars, and in December, January and over Easter they are full by mid-morning. The overflow is street parking in the residential lanes above, which adds a ten to fifteen minute walk downhill on the way in and uphill on the way out.

Arriving in the first hour after opening solves it, and so does arriving after about four in the afternoon in summer, when the day visitors have gone and the light is better anyway.

What is within walking distance

Simon's Town's main street is five minutes up the road, with cafes, a bookshop and the naval museum, and most guided days stop there for lunch. The tidal pool at Seaforth is beside the third gate. Further along the same coast road are the painted bathing huts at Muizenberg, the harbour at Kalk Bay and the tidal pool at St James, all of which appear on the way down from the city.

The address, in full

Frequently asked about getting to the right gate