The Transkei

On December 18th we finished our Holiday program and we were officially on vacation for the holidays. Mike, my housemate, and I planned a surf expedition up the east coast of South Africa from Port Elizabeth to Durban. The region is known by a couple of names: “The Wild Coast” is the term most tourists use and “The Transkei,” is how locals refer to it. This stretch of coast from East London to Port St. John is the most popular tourist destination in the Eastern Cape. Some go there to relax, some go for the waves, and some just go to get lost (for a long time). The region is quite rural compared to what we had seen travelling between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth; so what you see besides the hippies, hikers and hills, are the thatched roof mud-huts that house the native Xhosa people. The trip was designed around surfing and relaxing and it would soon become an unforgettable adventure. Neddie along with Chris, another GRS intern, joined us for the trip.

We started out on Friday evening after packing our rental car to the brim. We had four backpacks, four surf boards, and four dudes packed into a minivan for a 3 hour trip up to East London where we would stay for two nights. East London is an industrial city that is a little bit larger by population than Port Elizabeth. It is not the most exciting city in South Africa, but it is renowned for good surf and nice beaches. Nahoon Beach and Gonubie point were the spots where we surfed and they were beautiful beaches. Otherwise, we did a nice pub crawl on Saturday night to really get to know the city and meet some locals.


Our next destination was Coffee Bay. The town is very small and consists of two hostels, a hotel, and couple of restaurants. The scenery there is amazing with a beautiful beach and amazing cliffs dropping straight into the Ocean. Apart from the native locals there are a good number of hippies that have lived there for what seems like too long. The people were extremely friendly and we surfed all three days we spent there. We got in a beautiful hike to “Hole-in-the-Wall.” On another hike we were guided by a nice local named Eric who showed us the perfect place for cliff jumping into the ocean. He also gave us a tour of some of the caves where Nelson Mandela and his crew hid from the apartheid government in order to not get arrested during the 1950s and ‘60s. This gave us a little taste of the incredible history attached to this region. After all of that and four crazy nights in Coffee Bay we departed on a four-hour drive to Durban.



We drove into Durban on a rainy Christmas Eve to a hostel called “Surf ’n’ Dreams. The hostel was nothing short of its name and it was a great place to spend Christmas and Boxing Day. Christmas wasn’t exactly the same with out my family and the cold weather in New England. We woke up early on Christmas and drove to the beach for a surf session. We also enjoyed a true South African Braai (a barbeque), which Nick, the hostel owner, put on for some of the guests. We swam, drank, and ate. Mike even surfed in a Santa Claus costume. On the next day we had to get one last surf session in just south of Durban before Neddie left on his return trip to America. Chris, Mike, and I enjoyed a relaxing Boxing Day afternoon. Durban is a really nice city with a heavy influence of Indian South Africans. The city is suffering, just like many South African cities right now, due to endless construction in efforts to get ready for the World Cup. The new World Cup stadium is really interesting and it is worth checking out pictures of it online.



On the 27th I left Durban to drive south toward Port St. John. I was going back to the Transkei. I left Mike and Chris in Durban as they would be getting on a bus that evening to travel up to Mozambique for New Years. PSJ, as many refer to it, was a lot like Coffee Bay with the rolling hills, immaculate beaches, and cliffs over ocean. The road leading up to PSJ runs a long a jungle river that used to be the home to hippos. The river leads straight into the ocean and it’s quite an amazing site. The hostel was full of hippies, surfers, and hikers. I did not get any surfing in here due to the three shark attacks that had happened over the last six months. There had been three deaths due to sharks at the same beach and I wasn’t about to take any chances surfing alone. I did a short hike and relaxed at the bar listening to bongo drums and watching some hippies throw flames. The next morning I woke up early and started my seven-hour drive back to Port Elizabeth. I stopped in Cintsa which is located just north of East London. I was supposed to spend the night in this quiet beach town but I decided to save a little money and get home to my own bed after 10 days on the road. It was, however, early enough to stop for one last surf session at Yellowsands, a popular vacation destination just south of Cintsa. The waves were awesome and it was a good way to cap off an amazing surf trip.

Cruising into Port Elizabeth just as the last of the sun was setting, I quickly thought about all the things we had seen and done over the last 10 days. It was an unforgettable trip and I even improved my surfing a little bit. It was great to have an opportunity to travel this beautiful country. South Africa is full of so many different types of people and the trip definitely reminded us of this. The surf was great, but the scenery and the people are what I will remember the most. I think we got a lot more out of this trip than we had originally bargained for.


Travelling always gives you a better picture of what is going on outside your everyday bubble. The Eastern Cape is home to some of the poorest people in the entire country. These rural towns along the Wild Coast are a reminder that issues like poverty and HIV are so widespread. Grassroot Soccer is doing great work with kids all over South Africa, but it’s hard to imagine reaching all the people in the country and defeating this epidemic when there are so many small communities in different towns, speaking different languages, and living different lifestyles. One of the biggest parts of GRS’s curriculum is getting kids to act as a “coach.” They need to take the information they learn and share it with others. The data nerds in GRS call it “diffusion” and are working on studies about its influence. It really makes you realize that the only way HIV can be defeated is if the information we are sharing becomes an epidemic in itself.