Off the beaten track: Morgan's Bay, Eastern Cape

Marion Whitehead finds some unexpected treasures on the wild east coast

Standing on top of the dolerite cliffs at Black Rocks, south of Morgan Bay, just up the coast from East London, and watching the waves pound against them, it's not hard to see why so many ships have come to grief on this rugged shore.

One of the earliest was the Santo Espiritu, a little Portuguese sailing ship on its way back from India, laden with a cargo of pepper, Chinese Ming porcelain and carnelian beads.

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"It sank over there, close to Double Mouth Beach," says my guide Quicks Sonamzi, pointing. Apart from a cluster of buildings in the distance at Marshstrand, little has changed since 1608 when the survivors of the Santo Espiritu made their way ashore.

They lived on the beach and salvaged enough wood from the wreckage to build a small boat. Not much is known about them except that some of the castaways made it to what was then Delagoa Bay, now Maputo.

"You can still find carnelian beads on the beach at the mouth of the Quko River. We call it Bead Beach," says Sonamzi.

My treasure-hunting instincts immediately ignite and I resolve to walk in the castaways' footsteps before I leave Morgan Bay.

The Wild Coast is notorious for shipwrecks. In winter, southwestern gales work against the Agulhas current to generate freak waves of up to nine storeys high. Ships cresting them drop into what is practically a hole in the ocean. Some break up. Even the "unsinkable" Waratah steamship, the Titanic of the south, was never seen again after disappearing off the Wild Coast in the winter of 1909. No wreckage was ever found.

But today is fine and all Sonamzi and I see in the deep, blue ocean are frolicking whales and gigantic container ships on the horizon.

On the walk back to Morgan Bay Hotel, he points out interesting plants, such as white mangrove trees, growing somehow on top of the cliffs, and the little yellow star-shaped flowers of hypoxia, a traditional medicinal plant.

"The bulbs are ground up and soaked in water. You drink this to boost the immune system," says Sonamzi, sharing his Xhosa heritage.

From the balcony of my hotel room that evening, across the mile-long beach I see the wink of the lighthouse on Cape Morgan.

"My grandfather got here before they built the lighthouse in 1964 to warn ships of the treacherous reefs in the area," says Richard Warren-Smith, the third generation of his family to run the hotel.

During World War 2, his grandfather was a homesick South African soldier in Italy when he heard there was a boarding house for sale in Morgan Bay. Ivan Warren-Smith bought it in 1946 and today his descendants have turned it into a modern hotel, to which holidaymakers return year after year.

Unlike his Caribbean namesake a few centuries earlier, the Captain Morgan after whom this lovely bay was named was not a buccaneer. Captain AF Morgan was the master of the royal naval ship the Barracouta, which was used to survey the southeast coast of Africa in 1822, as the British were fed up with losing so many ships along this coast. The sandy bay south of the headland, named Cape Morgan, subsequently became known as Morgan Bay.

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It's an idyllic spot beside the sheltered Inchara River lagoon, where kids can play in safety a stone's throw from their campsites. Canoeists paddle upstream to see if they can spot the local fish eagle.

I see the big raptor lazing on a tree trunk in the river on my way to the Saturday morning market at Yellowwood Forest tea garden. Here, I find a bunch of chilled locals under the trees. Farmer Mongezi Dyasi is selling cabbages off the back of his bakkie, while Jan and Bryanie van Harmelen offer tastes of their innovative "fetazella" cheese.

Heath Rohm, the son of Yellowwood Forest owners Sean and Robyn Rohm, has yummy quiches for sale; the folk from Peas on Earth, a local organic farm, have homemade pies and veg. The smell of fresh pizza leads me to a couple of hobbit-like structures from which the tea garden, craft and gift shop operate.

"It's a cob building, made of mole hills and river rocks," laughs Robyn, who's known as the Cob Queen because of the cob-building workshops she runs. "We recycle and reuse as much as we can."

Fortified by pizza, I set off on the gravel road to Double Mouth Nature Reserve, intent on walking to Bead Beach to find my own treasure.

"Tide's coming in," the guy manning the gate warns me. Leaving the grassy terraces dotted with a handful of campers at this remote spot, I boulder-hop around the rocky point and am brought up short by the surging ocean rushing up a gully. I could wade through, but getting back might not be possible until the next low tide tonight.

Reluctantly I turn back. My treasure hunt will have to wait. But I still feel luckier than poor Captain Morgan. His secret? The well-travelled naval officer never got a chance to visit the captivating bay northeast of East London that bears his name. It's a treasure in itself - and I will be back.

sub_head_start Plan your trip sub_head_end

WHERE TO STAY:

• Morgan Bay Hotel and the Morgan Bay Caravan Park: 043-841-1062, morganbayhotel.co.za

• Yellowwood Forest: 043-841-1598, yellowwoodforest.co.za

• Double Mouth campsite: 043-705-4400, visiteasterncape.co.za

GETTING AROUND:

Quicks Sonamzi, call 078-951-0425.

MORE INFORMATION:

See morganbay.co.za and wildcoastholidays.com