Where Do South Africa’s Two Oceans Meet?

The confluence of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in South Africa is a matter of some controversy, mostly because of the drawing power afforded to a place that can say it’s “where two oceans meet”.

Cape Point (map) is often marketed as such a place, much to the chagrin of the folks in charge of Cape Agulhas (map), Africa’s southernmost point, which is home to the official oceanic demarcation line. Click here for more information.

Those involved with tourism at Cape Point fudge their stories slightly, taking advantage of the fact that the Atlantic’s cold Agulhas current mixes with the Indian’s warm Benguela current off Cape Point’s coast, often causing strormy seas. (Hence the promontory’s original name of Cabo del Tormentoso, Cape of Storms.)

Somehow the slogan “where two oceans mingle” doesn’t quite have the same ring as “where two oceans meet”, though, so Capetonians quietly burgled the latter phrase, and have since been spreading geographical ignorance and misinformation willy-nilly!

• Thanks to Nicole for inadvertently suggesting this post. She complained that SA Blog got its facts wrong about Polana in Kalk Bay – and was partially right, in that we had accidentally placed the restaurant/bar in Camps Bay in the post’s title. But she then went on to say that Polana was on the Indian Ocean coast… oh dear… making her another sad victim of our unscrupulous tour operators, who wilfully sowed ignorance in her impressionable mind. Don’t let what happened to Nicole happen to you!

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