Leaving Johannesburg, finding 16 friends in Hermanus

making friends – Six months after moving from Johannesburg to Hermanus on South Africa’s coast, the author went from knowing nobody to building a tight circle of 16 friends. The shift came through small, repeated acts: saying yes to new plans, initiating group invites, befrien

Six months ago, my husband and I uprooted our lives and moved to Hermanus—South Africa’s coast—leaving behind the metropolis of Johannesburg, where I spent the last 32 years. In my old life, friends were everywhere. In the new one, there was no one. Not a single familiar face.

Hermanus is small, with a population of 100,000. Johannesburg is a different world entirely, with 6 million people. I braced for the loneliness I’d been warned about: the kind that makes you feel stranded in your own routines. then fills the silence with awkward conversations—maybe with the rock hyraxes that frequent the coastal path shrubbery.

Instead, something like the “mythical village” people talk about actually showed up—fast.

At a recent birthday celebration for a pharmacist we’d befriended, the realization hit us all at once. We were surrounded by 16 people we’d call our friends. None of them were people we’d known six months ago.

It sounds almost too easy, especially when making friends in your mid-30s is always described with seriousness—like it’s a sport you train for. But for us, the turning point wasn’t a single big breakthrough. It was a set of choices we made repeatedly, starting with the simplest one: saying yes.

Our theme for this year is “Yes, and”—borrowed from improv comedy. We pledged that in 2026, we would say yes to as much as possible, and then go even further. When someone asked. “Are you guys keen to come camping?” the 2025 version of us would’ve said camping isn’t really our vibe. The 2026 version answered, “Yes, and we’re bringing everything we need for s’mores.”.

Those yes-es turned into rhythms. We take friends’ dogs for walks. We go camping by dams or hiking in the nearby Kogelberg mountains. During the summer months—from December to February here—our friend circle started to form around shared evenings: beach dinners where people take turns buying a heap of fried fish and chips. cracking open cold bottles after dips in even colder tidal pools. An impromptu wine tasting is always well-attended. Games nights stick. If I schedule scuba diving in our kelp forests, at least one friend is happy to tag along.

When you’re building a circle from scratch, that kind of momentum matters. It’s not just “fun”—it creates repeated contact, the kind that turns strangers into familiar faces.

We didn’t only meet people out in the wild. We also put ourselves on the map.

I posted about our move on Facebook and Instagram. and it worked in a way I didn’t expect: someone I’d last seen in university reached out to say she lived in the area. Dominique became one of my closest friends down here. Our partners get along so well that, watching them together, we sometimes feel like third wheels.

Another habit helped, too—refusing to treat strangers like they’re off-limits.

We befriended another couple by telling them they had a cute dog. They were around our age, enjoying a mid-week dinner at a lovely Greek restaurant. We got chatting, swapped numbers, and made plans to meet again a week later. We’ve kept meeting up since.

Over time, I’ve learned that community doesn’t always drift toward you. You have to pull it closer.

My default setting is shyness and introversion, so pushing myself to initiate plans has taken effort. Most people won’t start things—you might have to be the one to ask for numbers. or make a plan. or text the first invite. We’ve had to do that. We were the first people to text the group chat proposing a beach evening. People were quick to jump on the idea, but the push had to come first.

Alongside the yes-es and the initiative, I leaned hard into something structured: community groups.

I’m in all sorts of groups—one for creative writers. another for hobby artists. another for kite surfers. another for scuba divers. and another for hiking. The pattern there was straightforward: if you get the word out using social media, your groups grow. Once you’re inside groups. initiating plans with people helps build relationships. and the activities start overlapping—turning separate interests into one shared community.

It also helped that we weren’t just collecting friendships. We helped connect clusters.

We asked if we could bring some other friends to a New Year’s Eve party we were invited to. The result was that everyone started hanging out together. “My friend’s friend is probably also my friend,” or something like that—it became less of a guess and more of a lived-in fact.

And when the whole process started to feel like momentum, I didn’t stay safe.

I tried out a fencing try-out. The surprise wasn’t that it was intense—it was how fun it was to “fight with swords as it looks.” At the try-out, I met a group of other oddballs who also thought trying fencing would be cool. Those people turned into friends of mine too.

By the time we looked around that birthday party, everything we’d done—saying yes, posting about the move, talking to strangers, initiating plans, joining community groups, blending friend circles, and trying new hobbies—had stacked up.

The counterpoint to loneliness wasn’t luck. It was repetition, small enough to do on a normal day, and bold enough to change what the next month looked like.

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