About the area in the Eastern Cape (South Africa)

The heart of the Eastern Cape south africa where the main focus of our tours are, is not endowed with an abundance of fancy hotels and bright city lights but adequate clean accommodation of good standard, exists. Township tours are growing in popularity. We can oblige but prefer to introduce our guests to the rural villages from where many such township inhabitants originate. Should you wish to spend a night or two in a typical Xhosa homestead (not to be confused with an artificial 'cultural village') this can be arranged. In fact we like to see the benefits of tourism reach the most needy.

We are based in the former garrison town of King William's Town and the headquarters for military efforts during the latter frontier wars of the 1800's. Like Grahamstown, it has many fine stone buildings but is probably best known for being the final resting place of Steve Biko as well as Huberta the wandering hippo.

Since frontier war times, rural villages in the eastern cape have grown and homes become more westernized but the lush mountain forests and dense valley-bushveld remain much the same as they would have been at the time. Wildlife has been reintroduced in several places, and most of the beaches apart from some flotsam are as un-spoilt as when the first shipwreck victims struggled ashore. This and the old crumbling forts and forgotten graves helps bring alive our regions rich past.

The area is also steeped in early missionary and settler history and was the main contact and conflict area between Black and White in Africa for decades. In more recent times our province gave birth to great people of the struggle like Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, Robert Sobukwe etc and produced the first two presidents of the NEW South Africa! Our coastline yielded up the first Coelacanth believed to have been extinct for 50 million years and our golden shores saw the first Europeans setting foot on South African soil.