Blaauwberg Conservation Area, Nature reserve near Cape Town, South Africa

Blaauwberg Conservation Area is a nature reserve on the western coast of Cape Town featuring wetlands, rocky shores stretching 7 kilometers, and coastal plants. The landscape connects different habitats in a narrow band between the mountains and the sea.

Blaauwberg Nature Reserve protects the site of the 1806 Battle of Blaauwberg, where British forces took the Cape from the Dutch for the second time. Britain kept the colony until South Africa's independence. On Blaauwberg Hill, buildings from World War II survive, among them a radar station, a lookout and a mess room.

Shell middens within the reserve record human occupation of this coast going back roughly 15,000 years. Visitors walking the fynbos slopes can still see these accumulations of discarded shells, the material trace of generations who gathered food from the shoreline below.

The reserve offers hiking trails and bird watching spots with visitor facilities at the environmental center inside Eerstesteen Resort. Plan your visit for clear weather when the trails and shoreline are easily accessible and safe.

The reserve is one of the few places in the world where visitors can see two proclaimed World Heritage Sites at once: Table Mountain and Robben Island. Its 1,445 hectares also hold shell middens around 15,000 years old, and the holotype of the Blaauwberg dwarf burrowing skink was collected here.