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Truck in Port Elizabeth

Traversing the Transkei - The Wild Coast

Learnt several valuable lessons today. Plan, plan an alternative and plan a back up option. Fill up the jerry cans with fuel and take enough cash. Today was a weird day, travelling through the near Twilight Zone of the Transkei. Road signs disappeared as soon as we entered the region known as the Wild Coast. Such a beautiful but alien landscape, it felt as if we were in the middle of a film set. Planning to drive for 300km, it ended up as 500km as we missed our turn off as well as our back up route. For 9 hours (yes Truck likes to take her time uphills), we drove past awesome rolling hills, some lush with Sugar Cane, some barren and charred, many littered with car wrecks. The sun was fading fast and due to our miscalculations, our only option was to keep driving into the dark. Words of advice from everyone we'd met kept ringing in our ears "Don't, whatever you do, drive through the Transkei at night".
Over the past decade, towards the end of the apartheid era, the Transkei, birthplace of Nelson Mandela, has gained a reputation as a violent region in which to travel. This was not only confirmed by the masses of car wreckages along the road, but on a couple of occasions during the course of one day, we felt more than a little threatened and utterly unwelcome when we stopped to buy food and diesel in the towns en-route. Yes perhaps we were just having a bad day and met the wrong people. Our aim of these words are not to dissuade anyone from visiting the region, just to warn against doing what we did. Instead, plan each day's travel thoroughly.
Charlie was frantically scrabbling through the Guidebook to try and find an alternative destination once we knew our plans had backfired. We finally rocked up at Gonubie Caravan Park at about 9pm with no cash and hardly any fuel left in the tank. A right couple of fools having missed some spectacular sights and driven like fury to get over the border.
Our original plan was to spend a couple of nights in Dwesa Nature Reserve which is apparently a stunning hiking and potential diving area along the Wild Coast, and I'm sure that if planned well you can thoroughly enjoy the coastal resorts of the Transkei. It is recommended, however that you take a 4x4 as the roads leading to the coast are apparently pot hole ridden and unsurfaced. Also ensure you do your vehicle checks before entering the region. You really wouldn't want a break down here. No photos this time around as we felt that flashing around a Nikon or Sony was none too clever!

July 2000 update on The Wild Coast (Transkei):

Interesting to drive through this section again and to realise just how very paranoid we were last year. Understandable as we were fresh into South Africa and incredibly worried about all the vicious stories we'd heard on car hijackings and roadside murders. After 11 months of driving through 'Africa', the Transkei appeared as friendly, much cleaner, the scenery was beautiful, and the main road (N2) was in great condition. Yes, there were no fences to keep in the animals and because of this we'd still say drive carefully and avoid driving at night. But we'd also take a guess that the majority of car wrecks are there because of the animals trotting all over the road rather than through car-hijacking instances. This time, we spent a great weekend at Mkumbati Nature Reserve during our search for sardines, and just south of the Transkei border there's a great backpacker resort at Cintsa. Camp sites and cottages located in the hills above a pretty river mouth and 17km stretch of beach with stunning views over the bay. The Wild Coast is suitably named and well worth a visit.

Accommodation: We stayed at Lungile Backpackers 10 mins walk from the the dive centre. Its ideal location is coupled with the fact that it is a very cosy home from home. Facilities include swimming pool, TV, internet use, washing machine, clean kitchen, bathrooms and incredibly friendly staff. Cost to camp in the small garden: 20R per night per person. Dorms/Doubles: 45R per person. Two beautiful luxury (doubles) log cabins now available.
Other accomodation: The caravan parks a bit further out of town have good facilities and there are plenty of hotels to choose from. If you are booking a group/club dive trip with Pro Dive, they will organise accomodation to suit your needs. Just email them on dive@prodive.co.za