Agulhas National Park

Explore the Agulhas National Park, and you can instantly accomplish a whole lot of must-dos. See the southernmost lighthouse in Africa. Swim in 2 oceans on the same day. Explore the true wonder of fynbos – and its rarer coastal cousin, strandveld – in spring. Hear strange tales of legendary shipwrecks? Watch whales slap their tails as you explore a talcum-white beach. You can drive through the Agulhas National Park on your way to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa. There’s a glamour, an explorer’s thrill, that lies in visiting such a place.
The second-oldest lighthouse in South Africa was built here in 1848, an exclamation mark at the continent’s tip. (The oldest is Green Point Lighthouse in Cape Town, erected in 1824 to warn ships off the rocks outside Table Bay). Agulhas Lighthouse offers stunning views of this gently rounded coastal peninsula.
There is so much more to see. Even though this area is still in the process of being developed as a national park, it already attracts birders, beach-lovers, amateur botanists interested in the pristine fynbos and strandveld, and anyone who loves a good shipwreck story – there’s a shipwreck for every kilometre of coastline here.
Agulhas means ‘needles’ in Portuguese – the peninsula was so named by navigators in 1500 because true north and magnetic north coincided here. The needle-sharp rocks that guard this part of the coast may also have been a factor.