Simon's Town Tours

What to do in Simon's Town

Most visitors come for the Boulders Beach penguins — a resident African penguin colony living on a sheltered beach inside Table Mountain National Park. The village itself is worth an hour for the Victorian main street, the naval museum and lunch at a harbour-side restaurant. False Bay shark cage diving with sevengill cow sharks launches from the harbour.

Boulders Beach and its African penguins

Boulders Beach sits on the False Bay shoreline just south of Simon's Town, roughly an hour from central Cape Town. It is one of the very few places in the world where you can stand a few metres from wild African penguins — a genuinely endangered species — on a beach protected inside a national park. Wooden boardwalks run above the nesting areas so the birds are never disturbed and you always have a clear view.

The colony is resident all year, so there is no closed season for seeing penguins. The birds are most active early and late in the day, and the summer breeding months bring chicks and a great deal of noise. A SANParks conservation entry fee applies at the gate and is paid on arrival unless your itinerary states otherwise.

Visiting Boulders Beach from Cape Town

Boulders is visited as part of the Cape Peninsula sightseeing day rather than as a destination on its own. Our full-day private Cape Point Tour includes the Boulders penguins along with Cape Point, the Cape of Good Hope and Chapman's Peak Drive, which is how the overwhelming majority of travellers see the colony — see the bookable itinerary on the Cape Point Tour page.

A standard day allows roughly 45–60 minutes at Boulders for the boardwalk and the beach. If penguins are your main reason for travelling and you want longer there, plus the naval village, lunch and time in Simon's Town, ask us to shape a private day around it — we do not run a penguin-only group tour.

How Simon's Town fits a Cape Peninsula day

Almost every Cape Peninsula tour passes through Simon's Town on the way to Cape Point. If you want more than a stop — the museum, a long lunch, or a False Bay shark cage dive — a private tour built around Simon's Town gives you the time.