A hike that only took us a few hours felt more like a weekend’s worth of exploration. The landscape quickly evolves from pebbly walkway, to boardwalk, to sandy dunes, to rocky coastline and finally to a steep hilly trek before dead-ending into a stunning beachy stretch of coastline along the Garden Route. Robberg Nature Reserve is a small peninsular reserve in Plettenberg Bay, but because it’s surrounded by the vast Indian Ocean, you feel like a tiny speck making your way across the sharp rocks. If you’re a sucker for that feeling that you, and all your worries, are just a tiny piece of nothing compared to all of nature – this is your place.
About Robberg Nature Reserve
Robberg Nature Reserve is about a 30-minute drive from Bloukrans Bridge and 80 minutes from George. It’s a World Heritage Site and the caves around the peninsula contain rocks that scientists believe are 120 million years old. Robberg almost literally translates to Seal Mountain in Afrikaans, and you can spot fat, lazy seals all along the Plettenberg Bay side of the Reserve. If you’re very lucky, you can also spot blue duiker here – they are a very tiny and rare antelope (I didn’t manage to see any, unfortunately).
On the Reserve there is one hut called the Fountain Shack where a single group can stay for the night. The Shack overlooks a secluded beach, but requires a moderate hike to get to and has no electricity.
Getting there
We arrived at Robberg at about 2:30pm after stopping for lunch at Moby’s in Plettenberg Bay. Side note: Moby’s restaurant is beach front with a nice view out over the bay from a second-floor (or I suppose many people would call if the first floor – the floor directly above the ground floor) deck. They also have great sea food so we left feeling well-fed and ready to be outside moving again.
It was easy to navigate to the Reserve gate from Plettenberg Bay and the roads all the way to the parking lot are nicely paved, which was a plus. Entrance was 50 rand per adult, which was a nice surprise after paying 248 rand to get into Tsitsikamma earlier that morning. The parking lot is small, but there weren’t many people there as it was a Tuesday afternoon. I imagine if you go on the weekend you’d want to arrive just as the park opens. The woman who works at the shop on the Reserve said they open at 7:30am and I don’t remember seeing any other information about opening times. She said they don’t close until about 8pm.
What to do at Robberg Nature Reserve
We went for the hike and the view, though it looks like one could very easily spend an entire day on the pristine beaches. If you are driving the Garden Route, this would be a great place to get out and stretch your legs for a bit. There are seals lazing on the Plettenberg Bay side of the Peninsula and after only a short walk along the trail, you’ll be able to smell them. And then hear them. And then see them.
We wanted to hike all the way to the point so we chose to follow the seal trail, which is 9km round trip. It would be a pleasant, moderately strenuous hike at a slow pace – mostly because you are in the sun the whole way, which is a bit draining. The seal trail also involves a lot of ups and downs as you navigate the well-delineated path across Robberg Nature Reserve.
On the way out to the point, you begin to smell and hear the seals before you can see them. They look like fat old men relaxing down by the water. You can spot them on the Plettenberg Bay side of the Reserve floating motionlessly in the waves, basking in the sun on the rocks, or swimming effortlessly along the coastline.
We went in the afternoon on a Tuesday in January, so for a good portion of the hike we didn’t see anyone, though I imagine weekends and summer break (December) would certainly be more crowded.
What to bring
Sunscreen, sunglasses and water are absolute necessities as you’ll be in the sun for hours. If I did this again, I would freeze a water bottle so that it’s still a bit chilled by the time I reached the point. I’d also recommend a long-sleeved shirt and a hat just for added sun protection. Definitely bring a swimsuit. At the end of the seal trail you find yourself on a beautiful little beach with bright blue water and it is far too enticing after a sweaty hike to not go running straight into the waves. You may also want proper walking shoes. We did the whole thing in flip-flops and there was only one part where you jump from one large boulder to the next where I felt at risk of scraping up my feet. Otherwise, the terrain is sandy, hilly, and pebbly.
Bring food and drinks if you’ll be there for a while! There is a small shop with drinks and ice cream available, but it’s a steep hike to the parking lot from the beaches so you won’t be wanting to go back and forth.
You will want a camera – the coastline here is so beautiful, but don’t bother bringing a drone – you won’t be allowed to fly it unfortunately.
How long to spend there
The whole hike took us about 3 hours. We stopped to take photos, watch the seals, look around to see if we could see Blue Duiker, and swim. It could be done faster I’m sure, though I highly recommending building in swimming time once you finish the hike.
I don’t know if it was because I was unprepared for how long the hike was, dehydrated, exhausted from doing multiple hikes in a day, or something else, but I have never been so happy to jump in the ocean as I was after that hike at Robberg Nature Reserve.
I recommend spending anywhere from 3 hours to the whole day. Though we did the whole thing in 3 hours – I will say we moved quickly on the way back because we were on a bit of a time crunch. As a result, we left day-dreaming about when we could go back and spend more time there. It really is worth spending an entire day at Robberg Nature Reserve if you can spare it.
This was my favorite Garden Route stop and somewhere I plan to return to. If you want to see and read about some of the other places I fell in love with on the Garden Route, you can do that here.