Cape Town’s best tidal swimming pools
After scrambling over a few boulders and making my way down a trail, Miller’s Point tidal swimming pool came into view.
Located on a wild stretch of South Africa’s False Bay, a man-made rock wall enclosed the inviting pool, keeping out all but the biggest waves. Despite the fact we’d just driven past a penguin colony, my Cape Town mates told me I was still on the warmer, Indian Ocean side of the Cape of Good Hope.
A water-slide entry gave the pool a playful look, and convinced me to put down my coffee and splash on in. I don’t know what words I shrieked on entry. But after being told I was soft, I was reassured the tidal pool would grow warmer as the day went on.
Swimming your way around Cape Town might not seem like the most intuitive way to explore the famous Mother city, but a friend told me there are more than 22 tidal swimming pools ringing the peninsula. And when she suggested swimming as many as possible in one day as an exhilarating challenge, I was in.
The pools, which fill with salt water at high tide and warm up with the sun, offer more than just a safe place to swim. Scattered through some of Cape Town’s most beautiful coastal suburbs, they also offer a dip into history. Built for protection from sharks and rough seas, some of the pools date back to Victorian times and come with stories of secret tunnels, bawdy parties and scandalous nudity.
They took on a more significant role during the rigid years of apartheid when most beaches were whites only spaces. Pierre Bélanger, associate professor of landscape architecture at Harvard University, says the informally developed pools were used by all races and “were secluded spaces that united and mixed people.”
These days, the pools continue to be a fun (and free) place to immerse in the local culture. Here are five of the best…
Source: independent.co.uk