Coffee Bay to Hole in the Wall - On foot

Coffee Bay is one of the destinations on the Wild Coast that we had decided to skip. Both the backpackers there got pretty bad reviews; unless you are going there to booze it up - stay away.

But. We heard from a couple of people that the hike along the coast to the famous Hole in the Wall is pretty awesome.

So. We switched from going to Port St Johns to Coffee Bay and took our luck with the Coffee Shack backpackers.

Getting to Coffee Bay is pretty cool. We took the shuttle from the Mthatha petrol station to Coffee Bay. That area of the Transkei is pretty awesome. I am jealous of Hardy, a TDA rider, that rode along there after the tour on his way to Pretoria. Lots of hills, valleys, turns and forests. Also plenty of poor villages spread for ages across the hills. Its not Ethiopia - not even close - but it is the poorest I've seen in South Africa.

The Coffee Shack was pretty much what I expected. Compared to Buccaneers at Cintsa it is an absolute dump. The reviews are spot on. If you don't drink, stay somewhere else. We stayed across the river in the "quiet" area. We still got treated to the full show: doped up fools boning in the bathrooms, puking in the morning and rolling a contemplative joint to work out why being an idiot is so hard work.

On the other hand, the hike itself is awesome. The trail winds right along the sea which means that it is pretty exposed. If you are afraid of heights prepare to spend a bit of time managing it by looking at your feet. If you do look up you'll see plenty though. We saw whales breaching and a huge pod of dolphins. The landscape itself is pretty rugged and barren. It feels pretty remote, but there are a lot of mobile towers and so on around, so I guess that help wouldn't be too far away.

Here is the route that we took. Forgot to start it and the phone went flat just before we got back to White Clay, so don't plan a mission based on this or anything.

Hole in the Wall (Partial) at EveryTrail


We weren't sure how far away Hole in the Wall was, and we'd been told that there was nothing around. So we were pretty surprised to walk past a small town and then see it. We were so surprised that it took us a while to work out that we were actually at Hole in the Wall and not some other thing. It didn't help that we were there at high tide, which makes the hole look a lot smaller.

We took a slightly different route on the way back in places. A beach that we'd powered across had been covered by the tide so we had to struggle up an extra steep hill. On the other hand, we knew which of the other trails to take when there were a bunch of choices.

If you can arrange it, stop at the White Clay Guesthouse on the way back. It has great fish and you can look at the waves smashing themselves in to the cliffs you just skirted.