Backpacking The Sunshine Coast

The town itself is a pleasant, low-key place — surf shops, seafood restaurants, a Shell museum (genuinely excellent — the Sunshine Coast shell beaches are among the richest in the world, and the museum's collection is extraordinary), a relaxed main street, and the feeling that everything important is happening down at the beach. It grew from a fishing village in the 1840s, was put on the world surf map in the 1960s when the film The Endless Summer drew attention to the nearby Bruce's Beauties break at St Francis Bay — and adventurous surfers who came to find it discovered Supertubes just up the coast, which was measurably better. By the 1970s, J-Bay was a destination. By the 1990s, it was a global institution. Today it hosts a World Surf League Championship Tour event every July — ten days when the world's forty best surfers compete at Supertubes and the break is closed to the public but the spectating from the beach and the surrounding low cliffs is completely free and completely extraordinary.

For surfing visitors, a guide to the breaks

Supertubes is for advanced and expert surfers only. The wave is fast, hollow, powerful, breaks over a reef in shallow water, and the local crew is tightly organised and does not tolerate disrespect from visiting surfers. If you paddle out at Supers without the experience to handle it, you will get in the way, you will get hurt, and you will not be made welcome. Wait until you have surfed the rest of J-Bay and have earned the read of the wave. Respect the queue. Do not drop in. If your face is recognised and your manner is respectful, you will get waves. If it isn't, you won't.

The Point is where intermediate surfers belong. Longer rides, slower pace, more forgiving take-off, much less aggressive crowd dynamic. A good intermediate can have an outstanding session at the Point on a solid south-west swell.

Kitchen Windows is for beginners, learners, and longboarders. This is the only break where surf schools operate — locals have explicitly stated that surf schools are not welcome at any other break — and the waves here are gentler and more forgiving than further up the point. A two-hour lesson with board hire costs approximately €20–€30 and is an excellent way to start your J-Bay experience before deciding whether you're ready for the Point.

If you are a surfer of any level, plan to spend at least two or three nights in J-Bay. The town has good hostel options, the atmosphere between surfers at the camps in the evening is genuinely great, and you will not regret watching a perfect set wave come through Supertubes at 7 AM on a clear winter morning from the spectating area above the break. It is one of the finest free sporting spectacles available anywhere in the world.

2. Addo Elephant National Park

An hour's drive north of Gqeberha, and one of the finest conservation success stories in Africa. In 1931, when the park was proclaimed to protect the last remaining elephants in the Eastern Cape, there were 11 of them. They had been hunted almost to extinction by farmers in the Sundays River Valley, who in 1919 had called on the government to eliminate what was left. A public outcry saved them, just. Today, Addo is home to more than 600 elephants — the highest concentration of free-roaming elephants in South Africa — plus lion, leopard, rhino, buffalo, and a marine component (the park extends to the coast and incorporates the Bird and St Croix island groups) that adds southern right whales and great white sharks to the species list. This makes Addo the world's only Big Seven conservation area: the original Big Five plus whales and sharks. It is genuinely remarkable, and it is entirely malaria-free.

The elephant experience at Addo is different in character to Kruger. The park is smaller, the vegetation is the dense, thorny thicket known as Eastern Cape spekboom bush — the elephants' primary food source — and the sightings are often very close and sometimes very sudden: an elephant materialising out of dense vegetation metres from your car without warning is a recurring Addo experience, and one that never quite stops being astonishing. The main camp waterhole is one of the most productive in any South African park — elephants, warthogs, kudu, and buffalo use it constantly, and it is floodlit at night so that guests can watch after dark from the camp's viewing area.

Day entry for international visitors runs approximately €15 per person (SANParks rates, 2025–2026). Accommodation inside the park ranges from camping (approximately €20 per site) to self-catering chalets (approximately €50–€100 per unit), all booked through sanparks.org. The park's main gate is at Addo village, roughly 72 km from Gqeberha; a second gate at Colchester is closer to the N2 and slightly more convenient from the south. Allow a minimum of four to five hours for a self-drive visit; a full day is better.

3. The R72 Coastal Road

Between Gqeberha and East London, the R72 is the alternative to the faster, duller N2 highway — running along the coast itself through a sequence of small towns, river mouths, and beach villages that see a fraction of the tourist traffic of the Garden Route and reward the slow driver accordingly. It adds perhaps 90 minutes to the journey time between the two cities. It is the correct way to make it.

The R72 passes through Blue Horizon Bay, a tiny settlement on a rocky headland with an excellent beach and nobody on it; through Boknes and Cannon Rocks, low-key family beach towns where the lagoons are calm and the rocks are full of pools; through Kenton-on-Sea, the most appealing town on the stretch; through Port Alfred, the prettiest; and through a series of small river mouths — the Bushman's, the Kariega, the Kasouga — each producing a version of the same geography: broad beach, warm shallow river mouth, dunes, and the clean smell of the Indian Ocean. The road itself is in reasonable condition throughout; drive at the pace it deserves, which is not fast.

4. Kenton-on-Sea

Kenton-on-Sea is the best-kept secret on the Sunshine Coast and the locals who know it would prefer to keep it that way. The town sits between the mouths of two tidal rivers — the Kariega to the east and the Bushmans to the west — and the geography this creates is exceptional: wide, clean beaches flanked by river mouths where the water is shallow, warm, and sheltered, with rolling dunes above and indigenous coastal forest behind. The swimming is excellent, the kayaking on the rivers is outstanding, and the malaria-free Big Five game reserves within 30 minutes of the town (Kariega Game Reserve, Sibuya Game Reserve) make Kenton the only place on the Sunshine Coast where you can genuinely combine a beach holiday with a proper safari on the same day.

Kayaking on the Kariega and Bushmans rivers — through indigenous forest, past fish eagles and kingfishers, with the sea glinting at the river mouth ahead — is one of those low-key, unhurried activities that costs very little and stays with you. Woodlands Cottages and Backpackers, on the banks of the Bushmans River, offers guided kayak trips and is one of the better rural backpacker options on the Sunshine Coast. A half-day river trip costs approximately €20–€30 per person.

5. Port Alfred

Port Alfred is a small, pretty, slightly sleepy town on the banks of the Kowie River, established by 1820 Settlers and named after Prince Alfred, the second son of Queen Victoria, who visited in 1860 and gave the town its royal connection and its somewhat incongruous name (it was previously called Port Frances, Port Kowie, and several other things, none of which stuck). The Kowie River is navigable by boat for about 25 kilometres upstream, and river cruises from the small boat harbour take you through indigenous forest, past fish eagles, into a landscape that changes very little as you move away from the coast. Canoe hire is available; the paddle upriver and back is a classic Sunshine Coast afternoon activity.

The beaches at Port Alfred — particularly Kelly's Beach on the east side of the river mouth — are excellent: wide, white, with warm Indian Ocean water and a consistent beach break suitable for beginners. East Beach, on the west side of the mouth, is better for experienced surfers. The town has a good selection of restaurants along the waterfront, the Kowie Museum for an hour of local history, and a marina development that has brought the usual selection of holiday accommodation without, thankfully, destroying the town's essential unhurried character.

Bathurst, 15 kilometres inland from Port Alfred, is worth a half-day detour: the oldest pub in South Africa (the Pig and Whistle, operating since 1831), the world's largest fibreglass pineapple (a monument to the pineapple-farming heritage of the region — absurd, charming, and impossible not to photograph), and a pleasant main street of craft shops and galleries in a small town that has remained essentially unchanged since the 1820 Settlers arrived and decided this was far enough.

6. East London

East London is the only river port in South Africa — the Buffalo River enters the sea here, giving the city its unusual character as both a port and a beach town simultaneously. It is called Buffalo City by the locals, which tells you something about how they feel about the British name imposed on it, and it sits at the eastern end of the Sunshine Coast where the landscape starts to become the beginning of the Wild Coast: the hills greener, the air damper, the culture more emphatically Xhosa.

For backpackers, East London is primarily a surfing destination. Nahoon Reef — a consistent right-hand reef break in the suburb of Nahoon, with powerful, well-shaped waves of 50–100 metres in length — is one of the most respected surf spots in South Africa, a venue for national championship events and a break that has produced world-class surfers including former world champion Wendy Botha. The reef has also seen several documented great white shark incidents, including a double attack caught on video in 2000 that became one of the most widely circulated shark footage clips in history. This is not a reason to stay out of the water; it is a reason to know what you are paddling out into. Local surfers are a good source of current information on conditions and any recent shark activity.

Beyond surfing, East London has a decent city beach at Eastern Beach (accessible, popular, family-friendly), a good aquarium, the Nahoon Point Nature Reserve (a small coastal reserve around the reef with pleasant walking tracks and extraordinary views of the coastline), and access to the Strandloper Trail — a 63-kilometre walking trail running from the Kei River mouth to Gonubie that passes through 60 kilometres of coastal scenery including beaches, cliff tops, indigenous forest, and river crossings that require timing with the tides. It is a multi-day trail done in sections and is one of the least-known excellent hikes in the Eastern Cape.

The East London Museum deserves a mention specifically for its coelacanth. In 1938, a local museum curator named Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer noticed an unusual fish in a haul brought in by a local fishing trawler at East London harbour, and recognised it as something she had never seen. She sent a sketch to a fish biologist named J.L.B. Smith, who immediately understood what he was looking at: a coelacanth, a species of lobe-finned fish believed to have been extinct for 65 million years. It was the greatest zoological discovery of the 20th century. The original specimen is still on display at the East London Museum — a large, blue-grey, oil-rich fish in a display case, exactly where it has been since 1938. It is free to see and is one of those genuinely irreplaceable things that most people walk straight past. Don't.

Buccaneers Lodge and Backpackers at Chintsa, 40 kilometres north of East London on the road towards the Wild Coast, is one of the great backpacker institutions of the Eastern Cape — a large, social, beach-facing hostel with an enormous private beach, a pool, a volleyball court, a bar of legendary status, and a vibe that functions as a transition zone between the Sunshine Coast and the wilder country ahead. Many backpackers arrive for one night and stay for a week. The beach at Chintsa is the kind of place that makes it very difficult to remember what you were supposed to be doing.

7. Surfing Lessons and Board Hire

The Sunshine Coast is an excellent place to learn to surf, and J-Bay is probably the best-structured single location to do it. The surf schools operating at Kitchen Windows in J-Bay are well-established, teach in a consistent and manageable environment, and understand the local conditions in a way that makes them genuinely useful for beginners. A two-hour lesson with all equipment provided runs approximately €20–€30 and will get a complete beginner to standing on a board reliably by the end of the session.

For more experienced surfers, board hire is available throughout J-Bay and in East London. Daily board hire rates run approximately €8–€15 depending on board type. If you have your own board and are travelling by car, there is no shortage of quality breaks along this coast at every level.

8. Game Reserves Near the Coast

One of the Sunshine Coast's undersung advantages is the density of malaria-free game reserves within easy reach of the beaches. In addition to Addo Elephant Park, the following deserve attention:

Kariega Game Reserve (near Kenton-on-Sea): A private Big Five reserve on the banks of the Kariega River. Well-managed, with outstanding guides, excellent sightings of lion, elephant, and white rhino, and the memorable experience of approaching the river by boat on a game drive — animals drinking at the water's edge, forest canopy above, and the game vehicle in the river up to its axles. Full-day guided safari approximately €80–€120 per person.

Sibuya Game Reserve (Kenton-on-Sea area): A malaria-free Big Five reserve only accessible by boat across the Kariega River — which gives it an atmosphere of genuine remoteness despite being an hour from Gqeberha. The boat journey to the reserve itself is part of the experience; hippos in the river, fish eagles overhead. Guided game drives approximately €70–€100 per person.

Kwandwe Private Game Reserve (near Grahamstown/Makhanda): One of the finest private reserves in the Eastern Cape, on 22,000 hectares of Great Fish River Valley. More exclusive and more expensive than the above, but the wildlife experience — particularly for leopard — is exceptional. Day visits by arrangement; approximately €150–€200 per person.

9. The Shell Museum, Jeffrey's Bay

This is not a joke. The Shell Museum in Jeffreys Bay is legitimately one of the finest collections of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, and the reason is that the beaches around J-Bay are among the most productive shell-collecting beaches in the world — the convergence of two ocean currents and the shape of the bay creates conditions that deposit an extraordinary variety of species. The museum displays hundreds of species in detail, explains the biology and ecology of each, and contextualises the collection in terms of the ocean system that produces it. Entry is approximately €2, and it takes about 45 minutes if you are even slightly interested in marine biology. It takes longer if you are. It is the sort of thing that sounds like a rainy-day fallback and turns out to be genuinely compelling.

10. Free Activities

Walking the J-Bay point break spectating area: The low cliffs and walkways above Supertubes offer the finest free surfing spectacle in South Africa, and on a good south-west swell with a light offshore — which happens reliably throughout June, July, and August — the experience of watching professional-standard surfing unfold 50 metres below you, wave after wave, for as long as you want to stand there, costs absolutely nothing. In July during the WSL event it costs nothing to watch the world's best surfers from the hillside. Free.

Shell collecting at the J-Bay beaches: The beaches around Jeffreys Bay, particularly St Francis Bay and Cape St Francis, are among the best shell beaches in the world. Walking the tide line at low tide after an easterly swell is one of those slow, absorbing, completely free activities that is considerably more satisfying than it sounds. Free.

The Nahoon Point Nature Reserve walking tracks: A small, very pretty coastal reserve around the Nahoon Reef headland in East London, with walking tracks along the cliff edge above the surf, rock pools at low tide, and views back along the East London coastline that are quietly excellent. A footprint of a child, approximately 125,000 years old, was discovered preserved in the rock here — one of the oldest human footprints in South Africa. The nature reserve is free to enter; a small café at the car park serves good coffee.

Watching the Kowie River estuary at dusk, Port Alfred: From the small bridge over the Kowie River mouth, at dusk, watching the light go off the water and the fishing boats come in and the pelicans and cormorants settling on the mooring posts for the night is one of those quiet, coastal-town pleasures that costs nothing and requires nothing except the willingness to be still for twenty minutes. Free.

Kenton-on-Sea beach at low tide: The Kariega and Bushmans river mouths create a beach geography at Kenton that changes entirely with the tide — at low tide, the river channels are shallow enough to wade across, sandbars appear, and rock pools open up along the headlands. Walking the full stretch of beach at low tide takes about two hours and is completely free, completely beautiful, and almost completely empty outside December and January.

The coelacanth at the East London Museum: Free to enter (small voluntary donation requested), and the coelacanth is one of those things — like the Stevenson-Hamilton knife at Kruger, or the chain ladders at Sentinel Peak — that are simply worth seeing because of what they mean. Free.