GETAWAY MAGAZINE – September 1999 – page 80

A tame time on the Wild Coast
Written by : Cathy Lanz

I was a student the first time I tackled a hike on the Wild Coast – the five-day route from Coffee Bay to Mbashe River Mouth. Mosquitoes tormented us in the camp site the night before departure. An excess of rum proved ineffectual against their onslaught but ensured that our first day’s walk progressed to the uniform pounding of hung-over heads.

The Toppers turned gluey one night, my white t-shirt turned slowly brown and my skin white with successive, unwashed layers of sun cream. Cruel planning decreed that the two-kilogram pack of peanuts I was carrying would surface only on the last day…….but it remained the most memorable and beautiful hike I’d ever done.

Now, 15 years later, older, unfitter, a little less destitute and a bit more dependent on life’s little luxuries, I was back to tackle the southern section from Kob Inn to Morgan Bay. The accommodation was certainly going to be different, but would the camaraderie and the beauty be just as brilliant?

It was hard to believe, this time, that we were actually on a hike. Our first day’s itinerary, prepared for us by Nita Ross of Wild Coast Holiday Reservations read : “Arrive at Kob Inn for lunch and spend the afternoon on a cruise up the Qora River” – which is precisely what we did.

Evening found us ensconced at the bar watching, from the comfort of our stools, as sea spray rained down on fisherman casting heavy sinkers into gloomy grey breakers. Kob Inn’s reburbished bungalows are just a lawn away from the sea and the bar’s even closer, so the waves are pretty much with you, whether you’re drinking, sleeping or relaxing on the veranda.

There were oysters and other seafood delicacies for bar snacks, the beers were cold and plentiful and the main course at dinner was roast lamb and crisp potatoes……….and we hadn’t yet hiked a step.

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys walking, but can’t face a loaded backpack or a night without a bath or beer, then this trail is definitely for you. The scenery’s as good as it gets and then, at the end of each day there’s another hotel waiting with cold drinks, hot baths and seafood suppers. It costs a bit more than a conventional hike but, considering everything you get, it’s still a wonderful, value-for-money holiday – and there’s a full-size snooker table at every stop, no extra charge.

The next day’s six-odd kilometre hike from Kob Inn to Mazeppa Bay allowed for a leisurely breakfast and a quick visit to a traditional Xhosa village. (City slicking South Africans who think they have seen it all before will be in a few surprises: they haven’t, and these cultural experiences are eye-opening. Don’t miss it.)

Then our party of seven shouldered our painlessly light backpacks and headed off jauntily for the ferry across the Qora River. Bare feet or sandals were the preferred footwear for the beach beyond the river. The scenery was quintessential Transkei coast: green hills of close-cropped grass descending to an endless strip of white sand on which cows were the only sunbathers. Skirting the wave line, we were repeatedly tempted to pick up fantastically twisted driftwood sculptures bedded in the sand. Near Mazeppa Bay we left the beach, following cow path over a hill and down to the precarious suspension bridge. In a daisy patch on the island our lunch packs disclosed sandwiches and fruit.

The tiny holiday resort of Mazeppa Bay owes its existence to fishing: faded photos in the hotel bear testimony to some of the record catches that did not get away. The hotel has hosted fisherman and families for generations and in places the old building is beginning to show it, but it’s still a casual, comfortable, friendly hangout fronted by a fine swimming beach.

Our meager hiker’s rations that night included crayfish, roast lamb and pepperment tart. Later, in the bar, our genial host Vernon Acton had lined up every conceivable coloured liqueur for “shipwreck” – which seemed a fitting sort of game to be playing in tribute to the Clan Lindsay which foundered of Mazeppa Bay in 1898.

In perfect weather we made an early start (but not without the now mandatory big breakfast) for what was to be the longest day of the hike, the 20 odd kilometres to Wavecrest. A spring low tide made the walking easy along a wide, hard-packed beach which stretched as far as the hazy sa air allowed us to see. We waved to Xhosa women picking shellfish off the black rocks and stopped to slurp live oysters from a wizened old gatherer. Oysters are the one seafood delight I’ve never found delightful – and believe me, I’ve tried. The taste’s okay but the sensation of a slimy, live sea creature slithering down my throat is just not on. I’ll settle for peanuts any day.

All along the beach little rivulets tempted us to try the leap, which inevitably led to one wet show. Even the potentially gushing Gqunqe River was no more than an ankle-deep obstacle, recent floods having scoured out many of the river mouths. It’s a long days walk but don’t be tempted to rush. Stop and swim, fossick for cowries and drink in the endless beaches, snatches of coastal forest and rock-lined bays. Lunch time placed us near the holiday settlement of Cebe but, with a pushing tide and an anxious guide, there wasn’t too much time for lazy contemplation. We slogged on for an hour or more, and eventually rounded Sandy Point from where we could see Wavecrest, but there was still lots of soft sand between us and the first G&T on the veranda.

These days Wavecrest is more of a nature-lover’s haven than the fisherman’s retreat of old – and what a lot the hotel has to offer naturalists. It overlooks a pristine estuary fed by the mangrove-lined Nxaxo and Ngqusi rivers which weave through coastal forest where around 300 bird species live, sing and feed. Then there’s the colony of crowned cranes which fly over at sunset, and dolphins which frolic out to sea.

Although exhausted after the day’s walking, we didn’t forgo a sunset drinks cruise with owner Conrad Winterbach up the Nxaxo. We spotted a variety of birds, including what we thought to be a mangrove kingfisher. “of course, the best way to really bird watch is by canoe,” Conrad said, as the motor launch drifted with the tide. But with darkness falling and bar snacks calling, that would have to wait for morning.

Before sunrise the next morning we were dipping paddles into the mirror-like Nxaxo. The only sound initially was the swish of gliding canoes. Then, as the sun’s rays began to feel their way into dark, leafy glades, the forest creatures began their twittering melody. We added darter, giant kingfisher, trumpeter hornbill, black-and-yellow billed ducks to the previous evening’s bird tally.

After a four-course fortifying breakfast we turned our backs on Wavecrest’s beauty and headed for the Kobonqaba River Mouth. Around the bar the previous night, this river had been elevated to a hazardous impediment to our further progress. It did necessitate a chest-deep wade, with packs held aloft, but no liloes or swimming as we’d been led to believe. High tide, I suspect would have offered an entirely different scenario.

More beaches, rocky headlands and tracks through dunes brought us eventually to the wreck of the Jacaranda, moored, as though intentionally, alongside a dolerite quay. The usual tales of storms and treacherous seas surround the freighter’s 1971 arrival on the rocks, but locals hint at a different story – on onboard revelry, a cabin-hand at the helm and the captain “entertaining” in his cabin.

Whatever the true story, the same waves that are slowly tearing the Jacaranda apart have fashioned fantastical rocky fortresses, turrets and even dolerite bathing booths. The ever-changing formations kept us fascinated as we progressed towards Qolora Mouth, where yet another river crossing awaited us before finally reaching Trennery’s.

An icon to Wild Coast family holidays for decades, Trennery’s is set in a stand of dense, coastal bush. What it lacks is sea views it makes up for in activities : there’s an 11-hole golf course, bowling green, tennis court, swimming pool and all the river and beach sports.

After the day’s walk we settled for a quiet cup of tea on the porch and then a sundowner drink with a beachside location at nearby Seagulls (which is the alternative stopover for hikers). Back at Trennery’s persuasive hosts Don and Yolanda Wewege weren’t hearing any excuses about tired legs and early nights. They presided over a table where fine old Cape red wines were uncorked at roughly the same rate as a succession of courses was whisked from the kitchen : mulligatawny soup, then a seafood platter of alikreukel, perlemoen, crayfish, calamari and mussels. We tucked in with hiker’s appetites and demolished the impressive platter, only to find there was still pineapple pork and then pudding.

The wine just got better and the jokes a little rougher each round. Hiking was never this good, I thought, as I finally rolled into bed. Sometime during the night I had a nightmare about another hike and of picking listlessly at yet another pot of stodgy noodles.

A visit to Trennery’s wouldn’t be complete without doing one of Trevor’s nature trails. So, the hike on temporary hold, we joined local-knowledge exponent Trevor Wigley in his boat for a trip up-river to The Gates. Here the Qolora River has found a narrow route through vertical dolerite cliffs where black storks have built their nests high above the foam streaked, chocolate-brown water, and lanner falcons swoop overhead.

Back at Trennery’s after this highly recommended interlude, we shouldered our packs and followed the coast to the mighty Kei whose muddy waters stain the sea for kilometres round the mouth. From Trennery’s hikers can take an alternative route inland via the pool in which Xhosa maiden Nonquase is reputed to have seen her ill-fated vision (in retrospect, we decided, it probably would have been a more interesting walk).

All was quiet on the eastern frontier as we joined brightly clad mamas, a couple of goats and two cars on the pont across the Kei. Two centuries ago this river was the violently contested boundary between the east-bound British colonials and the west-bound Xhosa tribes. Sandwiched fatally in between were the Khoi strandlopers whose shell middens our guide Innot Nkonti had earlier pointed out to us.

The Kei marked our hello to civilization and goodbye to boys frolicking joyously naked in rock pools. Now, as we made our way along a coastal path, the grass brushed knee-high against our legs. It’s the same grass that adorns Transkei’s breast-shaped hills, but here there are no wandering herds of cows to crop it short and leave their calling cards on pristine white beaches. A little way beyond the holiday village of Kei Mouth our trail doubled up on the beginning of the Strandloper Trail and followed its route all the way to Morgan Bay. Here the white façade of the beachfront Morgan Bay Hotel signaled that our trail was done – but not before another cold, waist deep river crossing.

Morgan Bay is a delightful, family friendly hotel which has been in the capable hands of the Warren-Smith family for decades. Because wed be missing the hotel’s famous Saturday evening seafood extravaganza, our host Geoff Warren-Smith had organized a grilled platter of seafood treats instead. The feast was a fitting farewell to the wonderful Wild Coast hospitality.

Well, was it as brilliant as my first Transkei hike? Student capers and memories cannot, and should not, ever be emulated. But I now have another Transkei experience which rates among my finest memories. And, I have to admit, I’m entering that complacent age when seafood and fine Chardonnay are attractive substitutes for gluey noodles and Transkei Gold. And I wasn’t sorry about not having to lug the peanuts along, either.


 

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