The Wild Coast Meander – Beauty Beyond Description

John Roraugh free walks the Wild Coast Meander

Our party of eighteen are on the Wild Coast Meander, a four day hotel hopping hike covering 55 km on the extreme south of the old Transkei coast between the Qora River and Morgans Bay, delighting in being relieved of the weight and being informed by our locally trained guides as we cover the kilometres.

A PRIVILEGED FEW

For relatively modest amounts, ranging between R40 and R80 depending on the distance covered, we privileged few enjoying the Meander were able to not only have someone shoulder our packs, but at the end of the day , pay the person contributing directly to employment in the area we are walking through,

This simple yet effective system is run like clockwork by the East London based Wild Coast Holiday Reservations, who also organise the hotel hops and include transport both from the start and the finish Indeed one hand washes the other - the five hotels en route enjoy relays of up to 18 hikers as overnight guests and the trail in turn becomes more accessible to walkers who might bulk at shouldering a pack .
On arrival at Kob Inn before the start of the walk we took the opportunity of exploring the forest walk on the northern bank of the deeply gorged Qora River. As dusk descended the tree canopy was, alive with red billed hoopoes , black collared barbets bubbling away in the background ; brown throated martins swooping in the evening breeze, a solitary brown hooded kingfisher standing sentry over the riverbank and plenty of common sandpipers, reed cormorants and black winged plovers on the estuary channels.

After being introduced to our local guide, Michael Goosen and the porters who would carry our packs for the first leg of our walk, we said our good byes to the Kob Inn staff and set out for nearby Mazeppa Bay . With a gentle southerly breeze in our faces and after being ferried across the Qora River, we ambled along the beach for 6 km soon reaching our second overnight stop at Mazeppa Bay Hotel sheltering behind a pudding loaf hill.

THE SARDINE RUN

Day two and Michael arrived with a new set of porters . With some anticipation we started on the long 21 km stretch to Wavecrest. As it turned out we didn’t have time to think about the distance as we were to enjoy a long running live show as skirted the rocky shores and headlands - the Sardine Run was in full chase with schools of bottlenose dolphins constantly leaping and flighting along the backline as they hunted the migrating sardines; further off-shore spray showed us where pods of either Humpback or Southern Right whales were blowing and raising their flippers.

And constantly while the show continued, diving bombing Cape Gannets plunged into shoals and bloated kelp gulls settled in large groups off shore discussing the days catch and what tit bits could be expected on the morrow. Some of our walking group were fortunate enough to come upon a solitary Cape Fur seal on a fishing expedition within metres of the shore line.

Tides were on the neap, but the sand was generally hard underfoot. When our attention was not on the activity beyond the surf zone, there was plenty to see inland - vegetation types and coast landscape was constantly changed from grassland to acacia thicket, with blind estuaries and dune deserts backed up by milkwood dune forest, and completing the mix with dense stands of indigenous coastal forest on the bigger rivers. Fourteen kilometres out from Mazeppa Bay at Cebe River Community Nature Reserve campsite we stopped to switch porters and say our good byes to Michael and came under the wing of Pitwell

After a short lunch break beneath the beach cottages at Cebe Village, we continued walking, each step exposing a new hidden stretch of coast. And with perfect timing the south westerly lifted big swells thundering untouched off the rocky points, perfectly barrelled for the non existent surfer. I asked one of our party ,a veteran East London surfer, if this coast was ever surfed - “negative - very difficult to get here “ was his reply. And long may it remain so.

The weather was especially kind to us. The threatening cold fronts moving up from the southern Cape slid off eastwards into the deep Indian Ocean leaving only a thread of cumulus scattered across the horizon and we walked the last seven kilometres to Wavecrest lapping the Nxaxo River estuary. Come evening and relaxing on the wooden deck at our overnight stop at Wavecrest Hotel we spotted a pair of stately Crowned Cranes moving sedately over the exposed sand banks. Beyond we could clearly see the white mangrove tidal forest stretching further inland up the northern arm of the estuary.

STRONG ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES

Wavecrest has a prominently displayed environmental policy - making it very clear that the oyster beds in the estuary channel are out of bounds and cautioning visitors exploring the rivers by boat or canoe not to land on the islands midstream where a colony of African Oyster Catchers breed in summer.

Keith Cooper, former WESSA Director of Conservation, says that for several decades the area was under threat from mining. Again like the Zululand coast the miners wanted to get at the Titanium deposits in the coastal sands. Happily for Wavecrest and the local community their prospecting incursions stretching back more than 30 years came to nothing with the biodiversity arguments presented by Keith and Dr John Ledger winning the day. Interestingly when in the area and without prompting our guide on this section of the walk also voiced the same objections to the short term gains resulting from mining and the sometimes devastating social consequences.

Day three was a 14km stretch and we followed our guide and new set of porters from the hotel through coastal thicket broken only by a fording party at the Kobonqabu River. On the northern bank two mighty big strandlooper middens perched on the headland, perfectly placed by our African ancestors to exploit both the food stock in the river and the rocky shoreline. Sadly over the years man has used these middens with their rich shell strata of oyster, mussels and assorted molluscs as a convenient site for building material – the Kobonqabu midden although remote had suffered the same fate.

A RICH HISTORY

On past the remains of the Jacaranda, wedged firmly onto the rocks south of the Kobonqabu more than 35 years ago. Time and the elements are slowly destroying what is left or her . It is a fate that has been dealt to scores of other wrecks on this stretch of the Wild Coast which are accurately recorded at our penultimate stop, the Trennarys resort

The Wild Coast has a rich history and as we near Kei Mouth on the last day, our last guide Enoch stops at a small blind river mouth. It is the Gwara, and he relates the story of the enchanted pool at Ebamangeni five kilometres upstream reputed to be the site of the vision of Nongqawuse which led to the cattle killing phenomena in 1857 and which brought down terrible suffering among the Gcaeka.

The tale reminds us that both this coast and its hinterland has a strong resonance in the history of the AmaXhosa. We move on into the teeth of a howling south westerly, turn inland to a final crossing of the Great Kei River by the old pont and the final kilometres to our destination at Morgans Bay Hotel nestling like a transplanted Cornish village beneath the Cape Morgan Cliffs.

Diving Sodwana Bay