St Francis near Jeffreys Bay on the Eastern Cape Sunshine Coast is made up of St Francis Bay, Port St Francis and Cape St Francis.
St Francis is a laid-back holiday resort area with beautiful beaches that has been touted at times as the Eastern Cape’s ‘Millionaire’s Playground’. However, even though there are some very upmarket waterfront homes and apartment developments as well as multi-million rand beach-front homes, attributing such a glitzy description to St. Francis is a bit misleading. It doesn’t do justice to its heart. St Francis a far more ‘chilled’ and casual place than that – where you can drive around the wide suburbs of almost uniformly white thatched cottage lined streets and see beach towels and wetsuits out to dry on the lawns and surfboards up against open garage walls, smoke from the braai drifting in the air, and who-ever you stop to say hello to will very likely say ‘howzit bru’ – even if you are a woman.
After-all, St Francis Bay is where film-maker Bruce Brown found ‘the Perfect Wave’ in the famous 1960’s surfing movie Endless Summer. Bruce’s Beauties only works in the right conditions, and it is rarely epic since the harbour was built at the top section, but it’s there, and it can run for kilometres between Port St Francis and the beach at St Francis Bay. There are some other, mostly fun surf breaks in St Francis, while neighbour J-Bay offers up the serious stuff.
St Francis is also a mini watersports mecca. More than half the town of St Francis Bay on the Kromme River estuary is built around the biggest network of navigable man-made canals in Africa, so boating activities are very popular.
There’s good river angling and rock fishing, and the small and very pretty fishing Harbour at Port St Francis between St Francis Bay and Cape St Francis is home to many small ski boats as well as a few commercial fishing and chocca boats.
St Francis offers lifestyle resort living and accommodation at Cape St Francis, luxury harbour waterfront apartments at Port St Francis and canal marina living at St Francis Bay. Other accommodation options are beach front homes and less expensive ‘back a few paces’ home rentals and backpackers.
A Penguin Rescue Centre is located at Cape St Francis, where oiled and otherwise injured penguins and other seabirds are rehabilitated.
Don’t expect a scintillating nightlife. St Francis is just too small for that. Expect some good eating, fresh fish, calamari, mild to warm weather most of the year, long walks on uncrowded beaches, surf, sun, seagulls and the chug of pleasure craft plying the canals. St Francis is very quiet, but very pretty.
