Scarborough Beach

This guide to Scarborough Beach traces the village's odd path since April 1996, when this scatter of houses beneath Slangkop and Red Hill won conservation-village status, with strict rules meant to protect its dunes, fynbos, and the fishing and surfing families who lived there. It follows what happened to a population of barely a thousand people spread across four square kilometers once those same protections took hold. Camel Rock, the humped granite outcrop that gives the beach its name, still marks the shoreline to the right of the sand.