St Francis Hiking 

Experience the natural beauty of Cape St Francis and the surrounding area via stunning reserves and coastal walks. Cape St Francis is home to no less than five beautiful nature reserves - Cape St Francis, Seal Point, Seal Bay and St Francis Field as well as Irma Booysen Flora Reserve. These reserves offer a wide variety of walks suitable for all levels of fitness and experience. These walks, hikes and trails take you through natural coastal lands filled with indigenous plant and wild life. 

Chocka Trail 

Experience the area with the 4 day/3 night Chokka Trail. Three picturesque fishing villages, a rugged coastline, sand dunes as far as the eye can see, a tidal river, protected fynbos, wetlands and a visit to South Africa’s only privately owned working harbour. 

These are the ingredients that make up the Chokka Trail, a slack packing trail between Oyster Bay, St Francis Bay and Cape St Francis. This is the best possible opportunity to see and experience just how beautiful the area is - on foot, at your own pace and with overnight accommodation at guesthouses and the Cape St Francis Resort. 

Fauna & Flora 

South Africa is extraordinarily rich in plant and animal life and scientists have classified the different kinds of vegetation across the land. The southwestern Cape region is especially blessed in plant species, so much so that it is recognized as one of only six Plant or Floral Kingdoms in the world. Known as the Cape Floral Kingdom, it extends roughly from Gqeberha (previously Port Elizabeth) to Cape Town and inland, covering about 90,000 km2 and is home to 9,000 plant species, 70 per cent of which grow nowhere else in the world (i.e. endemic to the Cape). 

Our local vegetation type is the St Francis Fynbos/Thicket Mosaic which only grows on the lime-rich coastal sandy sites scattered between Tsitisikamma in the West and Gqeberha in the East. The conditions under which this vegetation type can grow is a relatively small area comprising 0.2 per cent of the Cape region in which botanists from all over the world have discovered new endemic species of plant life. 

Look out for bushbuck, grysbok, common duiker, bushpig, porcupine, vervet monkey, caracal, mongoose and otters. You can sometimes see the rare African black oystercatcher and occasionally an endangered Jackass penguin. Bottlenose and common dolphins are often seen offshore and, from August to December, southern right whales may be spotted in the Indian Ocean.