Eastern Cape Travel Guide

HOME Brochure Downloads SOUTH AFRICA Cape Town Metro Eastern Cape Free State Garden Route Gauteng Kruger Park Kwazulu Natal Limpopo Mpumalanga North West Northern Cape Western Cape AFRICA Botswana Kenya Malawi Mozambique Namibia Swaziland Tanzania Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe Advertising	The physical beauty and potential wealth of the coast and hinterland making up southeastern South Africa makes this province an obvious holiday destination. This same attraction, however leads to a turbulent and interesting history and the throwing together of many cultures. The first people to settle in the vast terrain of starkly contrastive topography were the Stone Age San and later the pastoral Khoi-Khoi. They soon found the area hospitable in climate, hunting and grazing, but entirely less hospitable with the arrival of the Xhosa and Nguni tribes from central and eastern Africa, who, too, found the hills of the Kei, Fish, Sundays and Keiskamma River valleys too attractive to forego, and the San, as in almost every other area they inhabited, were driven away. The caves and rock shelters of their former hunting and farming grounds are now evidence is sepia, the daguerrotypes of the dispossessed. The Xhosa were divided into many clans, including the Fingo, Mpondo and Mpondomise, and their villages and distinctive culture still thrives in the malachite slopes of the large area they now inhabit. The 19th Century brought the first major European migration to these parts, with the churches and missions of explorers and trekboers leaving their colonial mark. The 1820 British Settlers, numbering originally only around 4 000, led to nine so-called Frontier Wars between the new settlers and the local Xhosa. After much bloodshed, muskets and cannons defeated knobkerries and assegais, and permanent British settlement began to thrive in the fertile valleys of the newly proclaimed Settler country. The legacy of the many different settlers to this land is in the cultivated lands and well-equipped coastal resorts of the province. The Esatern Cape is a much-frequented holiday destination, able to boast beautiful beaches, safe warm bathing, excellent surfing, spectacular scenery, malaria-free game parks featuring the 'big five' and a range of outdoor activities.	click to view map DESTINATIONS COMING SOON
	Copyright ©  CSD / Africa Explored