Beaches, Coasts and Islands The coasts of Southern Africa are no less rewarding to visit than the wilderness areas of the interior. The east coast is most accessible, and as a consequence enjoys far greater exposure than the west. Until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 15th century, the coast of East Africa had been the almost exclusive hinterland of Arab trade emanating from the red sea and the Gulf principalities. The coastal Swahili people, occupying the eastern seaboard from the equator to the mouth of the Rovumo River, assimilated this culture over the centuries, and have as a consequence adopted a strong Islamic flavour in their worship, lifestyle and language.

Islamic influence on the coast is most strikingly evident on the Island of Zanzibar, the one time seat of a Sultanate that controlled much of the slave and general trade along the east African coast, it now is a major producer of spices and something of a museum piece of a fading, but not altogether lost period of African history. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to discover a route around the Cape of Good Hope, after which they entered into a power struggle with the Arabs over East African trade that only staggered to a close some 300 years later. The Portuguese then withdrew to their stronghold south of the Zambezi, where nowadays a much stronger strain of Catholicism than Islam is evident. Portuguese remains the lingua franca, and a strong Latin sensibility pervades in music, food, dance and culture. The tourist infrastructure all along the east coast is highly developed, but this does not in main interfere with the authenticity of life, and in fact merely contributes to an already mixed palette of languages, influences and cultures. radise Islands of Mozambique also offer a rare glimpse into the synthesis of near east and European cultures with a curious mixture of Portuguese and Arabic in the style, taste and image of the Mozambique coast. The Portuguese also dominated the western seaboard with their colonisation of Portuguese West Africa, or Angola, which, since the late 1960s, has been in the grip of war and political instability. North of Angola the narrow littoral of land that links the Democratic Republic of Congo to the sea has also been a zone of long standing political instability that has tended to limit general access. South of Angola the Atlantic coast is accessible along the coast of Namibia, and south through South Africa to the confluence of the two oceans east of Cape Point. In Namibia lies the legendary Skeleton Coast where the Namib Desert abuts the Atlantic Ocean, and the cold Benguela Current. Again a curious ecology exists virtually without precipitation, but with the help of moisture laden fogs consequent to a cold ocean and a warm landmass. The Namibian Government declared 16000 square kilometres of the coast a national park with the extreme north being a wilderness area. Namibia also has the Etosha Pan wildlife park, and a vast hinterland of desert landscapes largely open to travel.

Further South British and Dutch influences predominate along the Kwazulu/Natal and Cape coasts of South Africa. The coast of Kwazulu/Natal from Swaziland to the Transkei has been described as how Southern California might have appeared 50 years ago. There is a degree of Africa somewhere within it, but it is often not easily visible to the outside eye. The regional capital of Durban, with the world’s largest East Indian population outside of India, has a very unique and unusual cultural aspect. Strong Anglo/Saxon origins are overlaid first by Indian influence, and then again by the emergence of a strong African identity that has gathered pace since independence. The Durban curry is as famous as the surfing beaches, and the beautiful people who stroll ocean front esplanades with shades of Rio, Bombay, Bognor Regis and Bondi Beach. Further south still a merger of temperate and tropical themes dominate the Wild Coast of the Transkei which is an area of black communal ownership that has determinedly resisted any efforts by white capital to develop it. The Wild Coast is wild only in the context of its greater surroundings, but it is wild enough to be a breath of fresh air from the excesses of the Natal South Coast.