Paternoster is a picturesque fishing village, located on the West Coast, just ~150km from Cape Town. I’ve seen very beautiful photos of Paternoster so I thought that I need to check it out. I used Booking.com and found a cute guesthouse called Gelukkie. Booked my stay and the rest is holiday history.
Writing a ‘things to do in Paternoster’ post can be a bit difficult. As with many small towns, there isn’t much to do but relax! These are the things I got up to while I was there – you might want to try them out.
Paternoster Beach
While the water was WAY too cold for swimming during the time I was there, there was one brave soul /fool merrily swimming about. This beach is more of a ‘long walk on the beach’- kinda beach.
Paternoster Beach during the day
You can watch the fishermen come to shore and take stunning pictures of their cute boats. In addition, there are some spectacular sunsets and it’s not an odd occurrence to see loads of tourists taking their wine glasses to the beach and just chilling there.
Paternoster Beach at sunset
Stroll down the Main Road and check out galleries & trinkets
Small towns and arbitrary trinkets seem to go well together. Being a tourist puts you in a jovial mood and you tend to be more willing to spend your hard earned cash on fridge magnets. There’s no shortage of cute trinkets to buy in Paternoster!
A popular shop close to the entrance of Paternoster
There’s also a few galleries that you can check out.
Main Rd, Paternoster
Tietiesbaai
Tietiesbaai is really worth checking out. It is situated in the Cape Columbine Nature Reserve.
Can you believe we couldn’t get the right directions to this place when we asked a local? It’s not like there’s much in Paternoster!
Anyway, we used the GPS to find the nature reserve. It was maybe 15 minutes out of Paternoster and most of it was on a dirt road. Our little car handled it fairly well. If, however, there were people driving behind us, they probably would have been very irritated by how slow we were driving.
Tietiesbaai is a camping spot but it allows for day visitors.
Any idea to why it’s called Tietiesbaai? And no, I’m not translating
The Cape Columbine Lighthouse is a beautiful and classic example of a lighthouse. For a small fee, you can walk right to the top of it. Not recommended for people afraid of heights!
The Cape Columbine Lighthouse
Climbing up one set of stairs in the lighthouse
View from the Tietiesbaai lighthouse
The reserve itself is stunning. Take some time to walk around.
Local is lekker (eat out)
There is only so much braai you can eat. Paternoster has a wide range of restaurants. There were 2 places that I found the owners were a bit iffy towards us. The staff at the restaurants were always fantastic, though. I will not name and shame.
I will mention Blikkies Pizzeria as they have friendly staff, make delicious pizzas, beautiful views, and cater to vegetarians.
View at Blikkies Pizzeria
Seafood Braai
Paternoster is a fishing town and it’s famous for crayfish. For the foreigners out there, what we know as crayfish (the Cape Rock Lobster/ West Coast rock lobster or scientifically, Jasus lalandii) is a spiny lobster indigenous to the coast of Southern Africa [1].
When you drive into Paternoster, you’ll undoubtedly be greeted by men trying to sell you the catch of the day. Hence seafood braais are a popular pass time. I’m unsure of the legality of some of the people selling. Please be sure to check. You do not want to be fined in a roadblock or worse.
Even though this is on my list of things to do, I do not eat seafood and didn’t have a seafood braai. It just felt weird to leave seafood out of Paternoster as that is what they’re famous for!
There are several other famous places in Paternoster – like Reubens and the Panty bar. We didn’t have time to check out Reubens and I wasn’t that interested in seeing old panties (lol). Maybe next time!
– Rif