There is ancient magic on this coast – magic that causes waterfalls to fall directly into the sea; magic that calls the dolphins to play in the warm water.  There is magic that haunts the high cliffs of black rock; the strange landscapes; the spirits of water and forest and stone. There is magic too, in the old traditions of the people – the tall elegant ochre-clad women who sway down the dust roads with jars of water on their heads; the amakhweta boys with their clay-daubed white faces and reed dancing skirts; the pot-bellied piglets that trundle along the roadside.  This is a land that is full of spirits – water spirits that dwell in pools and once caused a young girl to make a prophesy that would lead her people to disaster; tree spirits in the thick forests that cling to the cliff-sides of sheer mountains; sea-spirits about which legends are told at the fabled Hole-in-the-Wall.

This coast is restless – there are angry waves and currents that clash and foam out beyond the shore and have given the Eastern Cape a shipwreck-strewn shoreline and a reputation as being the home of fractious sea gods. There is magic, too, in the names of places - some of them recalling the sigh of the wind or the rush of water, some of them reflecting the characters and the rambunctious history of this frontier.

If there is something in you that makes you want to break from the tradition of a one-size-fits-all lifestyle, with cookie-cutter holidays – then come to the Eastern Cape. The secrets you uncover might be your own

The area around the Fish River Sun is steeped in history, with artefacts from the famous Camp Maitland (later Fort Albert), established by Cape governor Peregrine Maitland as his headquarters in 1846, still to be found in the grounds of the resort.  The area’s involvement in the nine frontier wars is well documented.  There are many sidelights and historical snippets surrounding the resort, and it is acknowledged that it occupies one of the richest ecologies on this coast.