Stilbaai, also known as the Bay of Sleeping Beauty, is a town along the southern coast of South Africa about four hours by car from Cape Town. It is part of the Hessequa Local Municipality in the Western Cape province. Alternate spellings of the town’s name include Stillbay, Stilbay, Stillbaai and Stilbaai.
The town hosts a variety of B&B lodges and a friendly warm coast for surfing and swimming. During the peak of summer the warm waters at times become packed with blue bottles (a stinging sea creature also known as a portuguese man-of-war) when an easterly wind is blowing and the chance of being stung by one is high.
Stilbaai is host to a number of interesting archaeological sites, including ancient fish traps thought to have been built by early ancestors of the Khoi people of the Southern Cape, and a shell landfill that has been carbon dated to around 1,000 BC.
Another archaeological site is situated in a group of caves at Blombos cave, about 12 kilometers from Stilbaai. Artifacts found at Blombos have been carbon dated to around 77,000 BP, making it the oldest known human settlement today
