Mention a South African walking holiday and most people picture the Otter Trail, or a guided climb up Lion’s Head with the city laid out below. Both are worth every bit of their reputation. But there’s a longer list of ways to spend a day, or a week, on foot in this country: a five-day trek along a coastline with almost no one else on it, a village in the Mpumalanga mist where wild horses still roam, a sport that turns a hike into a swim and a swim into a controlled fall down a waterfall, and a different way to see the bush entirely, on foot rather than from a vehicle.
The Wild Coast, On Foot and Slow
The Wild Coast runs from East London toward Durban, and it earns its name honestly: vast, nearly deserted white sand beaches, dramatic cliffs, rugged green hills, and a resident population of Xhosa communities who’ve kept their traditions and their welcome intact through a complicated colonial and Transkei-era history.
The route worth building a trip around runs from Port St Johns to Coffee Bay, 64 kilometres, usually walked over five to six days. It’s a strenuous hike by any measure, with steep elevation changes, several river crossings, and long beach sections that test a different set of muscles than mountain trails do. Community guides from local groups lead the way, porter services are available if you’d rather not carry your own pack for a week, and overnight stays in village accommodation mean your money goes directly into the communities you’re walking through, rather than to a chain hotel. Community-guided five-day hikes start at roughly R2,255 (around US$210) per person for groups of six, including basic lodging and a few meals.
If six days of camping and river crossings sounds like a lot, there’s a shorter, more structured option further along the same coast. The Chokka Trail, named for the squid species the area is known for, runs less than 12 kilometres along an unspoilt stretch between Cape St Francis Resort and Oyster Bay Lodge, both Fair Trade in Tourism accredited, so you’re staying somewhere properly vetted at either end. Along the way you’ll pass three fishing villages, rugged coastline and sand dunes, a tidal river, protected fynbos, wetlands, a privately owned working harbour, and the SANCCOB seabird rehabilitation centre, with wine and local squid tastings and a canoe trail through the St Francis canals rounding out the stops. It’s walkable as daily segments or a full four-day journey, fully guided and porter-supported year-round, with spring (August to November) the recommended season. Rates start from US$400 per person for the four-day version, bed and breakfast included, and it’s about an hour’s drive from Port Elizabeth, with flights available from Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Our bookable Wild Coast Hotel Hopper packages a hotel-to-hotel version of this general region for anyone who wants the scenery without the camping.
Mpumalanga’s Blue Swallow Trail
Most people visiting Mpumalanga are headed to Kruger, and fair enough. But tucked near Nelspruit, close to the gold-rush-era village of Kaapsehoop, is a four-day hiking route that rewards anyone willing to add an extra couple of days to their itinerary.
The Blue Swallow Trail can be walked in full or broken into daily segments, and it moves through forestry plantations, across green valleys, up clear streams, and down into pockets of natural forest. Wild horses, descendants of animals abandoned after the gold rush, graze along the route alongside baboons, and overhead, if you’re lucky and it’s the right season, you might spot the trail’s namesake: the rare Blue Swallow. The overnight stops are part of the appeal in themselves, an old railway carriage converted for sleeping, and a recently renovated forestry hut among them, before the trail finishes back at Kaapsehoop, where the Silver Mist Country Inn makes a comfortable base. Self-catered rates run around R450 per person for two sharing (excluding meals), with inn rooms from R750 a night.
Kaapsehoop’s wild horses have their own small tourism economy built around them, including volunteer projects that help manage the herd responsibly. This write-up on visiting the horses is worth a look if that side of the trip interests you as much as the walking does.
Kloofing: Walking That Turns Into Swimming, and Sometimes Jumping
If regular hiking feels a little too dry, literally, kloofing might be the answer. It’s an adventure sport built around exploring canyons, gorges and ravines, known in South Africa as kloofs, through a mix of hiking, swimming, climbing, and, depending on how adventurous you’re feeling, abseiling or cliff jumping into the pools below.
The vocabulary alone tells you what you’re in for: scrambling over rock using hands and feet, rappelling down a rope on steeper sections, and the occasional deliberate leap off a ledge into deep water. Five destinations stand out. Kong Canyon, in the Injasuti Valley at the foot of the Drakensberg, offers half-day or full-day routes with abseils ranging from five to twenty-five metres. De Hel and De Hoek, in Western Cape wilderness, involve an eight-hour hike and pools up to five metres deep. Riviersonderend and the more demanding Suicide Gorge, both in the Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve, run seven and nine hours respectively. Witels, in the Hex River region, is a proper multi-day expedition at 38 kilometres over five days, and access requires membership with a recognised mountaineering club. Grootkloof, in North West province, packs a twenty-metre waterfall abseil into a six-hour outing.
That Witels membership requirement isn’t unusual for the sport. Several of South Africa’s more serious kloofing routes are only accessible through an affiliated club, largely for safety reasons given the technical rope work involved. The Mountain Club of South Africa’s Johannesburg section is a good starting point if you want to understand how that access works before booking anything.
Walking Safaris: A Different Way to See the Bush
Every one of the walks above involves choosing your own pace. A walking safari asks something different of you: moving quietly, on foot, through country where you are very much not the largest thing around. It’s arguably the most engaging way to see game precisely because so much of the usual buffer is gone. No engine, no windows, and wildlife that notices you noticing it.
Rangers leading walking safaris carry rifles, and it’s worth understanding why, because it’s easy to misread as the experience being more dangerous than it is. One ranger we know put it well: carrying a rifle on a walking safari is akin to carrying a fire extinguisher. You hope never to use it, and a guide who does has usually already made several mistakes earlier in the encounter. The real skill lies upstream of that moment, reading animal behaviour early enough that a surprise meeting never happens in the first place, choosing a route with the wind and the terrain in mind, and knowing which species to give a wide berth well before they notice you.
Walking safaris run across a number of South African reserves, usually in short guided sessions rather than full days, and they pair naturally with a lodge-based safari for travellers who want both the game drive and the slower, on-foot version of the same bush.
If You Want the Big Names Too
Not every great walk needs to be an undiscovered one. If the Otter Trail’s ancient yellowwoods, Narina trogons and overnight beach huts have been on your list since the first time someone described it to you, here’s the full day-by-day breakdown, five days, six overnight stops, and a difficulty rating that’s more forgiving than its reputation suggests. Cape Town has its own version of a perfect half-day: the Lion Trail strings together a Signal Hill hike, a bracing swim at Clifton and a scooter ride home, worth doing even if you’ve lived in the city your whole life.
Still deciding which trail actually suits your legs and your calendar? Our guide to guided walking in South Africa runs through seasons, fitness levels and what to pack, and our piece on slackpacking explains the fully supported version of all this, for anyone who’d rather hike hard by day and sleep in a proper bed every night.
Plan Your Walk
Whether it’s a week on the Wild Coast, four days chasing wild horses through the Mpumalanga mist, or an afternoon dropping into a canyon pool, South Africa’s walking trails reward people willing to go past the obvious one. Our Hiking & Walking journeys include a guided Cape Peninsula and Overberg hike built around exactly this kind of route, or get in touch and we’ll help you plan the one that suits you.
