Cape Agulhas

Cape Agulhas is the geographic southernmost point of the African continent — not the more famous Cape of Good Hope, which lies roughly 150 km to the west-northwest. According to the International Hydrographic Organization, the cape marks the traditional dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian oceans, though in practice the warm Agulhas and cold Benguela currents mingle across a zone that shifts seasonally. A stone cairn and a map plaque set on the low, rocky shore let visitors stand, quite literally, at the tip of Africa.

Presiding over the headland is the Cape Agulhas Lighthouse, commissioned on 1 March 1849 and built in the classic Egyptian Pharos style. It is said to be the second-oldest still-operating lighthouse in South Africa and houses what is described as the country's only lighthouse museum, with a small restaurant alongside. Its light guides vessels past a coastline long notorious as a graveyard for ships that strayed too close to land.

The cape sits within the roughly 20,000-hectare Agulhas National Park, which protects endangered lowland fynbos, wetlands and a shipwreck-strewn shore rich in birdlife. In winter and spring, southern right whales move into the sheltered bays nearby to calve, sometimes coming close inshore. As part of the Western Cape, the area is malaria-free, making this remote southern edge of the continent an easy, year-round destination.