Travel to St Francis Bay

a relatively sleepy and upmarket area

St Francis Bay is located around 75 km east of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa.

This quiet, sleepy and relatively upmarket coastal settlement is quite a contrast to its rather brash neighbour, the surf capital of Jeffreys Bay.

Set along the eastern side of a peninsula, surrounded by nature reserves and wild beaches, the town has a distinctly unspoiled feel to it.

It comprises avenues of luxury holiday and retirement homes, most of them in traditional thatch, some lining a network of recently engineered waterways connected to a scenic river estuary.

When we do include the St Francis Bay area in trips it’s virtually always as part of a self-drive exploration, usually starting in Cape Town, heading east through the Winelands, the Little Karoo and the Garden Route, to overnight here before either heading on to the wildlife reserves of the Eastern Cape or ending at Port Elizabeth.

The best accommodation options in St Francis Bay are relatively small guesthouses.

last stop before Port Elizabeth airport