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Author: BazBus Editorial Team
Quick Summary: The 900-odd kilometres between Port Elizabeth and Durban take in some of the least-visited and most rewarding coastline in South Africa — Chintsa, Coffee Bay, Hole in the Wall, Port St Johns and the rolling hills of the former Transkei. Most travelers skip it because the logistics are genuinely harder than the Garden Route, not because the destination disappoints. This guide explains the route section by section, sets out the realistic transport options in 2026, and is honest about what BazBus does and does not currently operate.
Before anything else, the honest part. The active BazBus network in 2026 covers three things:
The Port Elizabeth to Durban leg, the Wild Coast stops and the onward inland run to Johannesburg are not on the current schedule. We ran those corridors for many years, and older blog posts, guidebook entries and third-party listings still describe a continuous Cape Town to Johannesburg pass. That information is out of date. If you plan a Wild Coast trip around it, you will arrive in Port Elizabeth with a problem.
We would rather tell you that plainly than sell you a connection our operations team cannot deliver. The practical result is that your overland trip north of Port Elizabeth needs to be assembled from other transport, and the sections below explain exactly how travelers are doing that right now. If the route returns to our schedule, this page will be updated.
Three things push travelers onto a plane at Port Elizabeth.
The first is distance without obvious anchors. Port Elizabeth to Durban on the N2 is roughly 900 kilometres and about ten to eleven hours of driving without stops, and almost none of it passes a town that a first-time visitor has heard of. The Garden Route, by comparison, packs fifteen recognisable stops into 750 kilometres.
The second is the transfer problem. Most of the Wild Coast’s best-known places are not on the N2. Coffee Bay sits about 80 kilometres off the highway down the R411, a road that ranges from decent tar to badly potholed depending on recent rains and municipal maintenance. Port St Johns, Bulungula and Mpande are similar. Every one of them requires a secondary journey, usually a hostel shuttle meeting a long-distance bus at a petrol station outside Mthatha.
The third is simply that it is less documented. Thirty years of running backpackers up and down this coast taught us that the places people skip are usually the ones they talk about for the longest afterwards. The Wild Coast is the clearest example of that pattern in the country.
The first stretch leaves the Eastern Cape’s industrial coastline quickly. Port Alfred sits where the Kowie River meets the sea, with a marina, a long swimming beach and a river-mouth sandbar that produces a decent beginner surf break. Kenton-on-Sea, between the Bushmans and Kariega rivers, is quieter and busiest over the South African December holidays.
Many travelers use this section as a day trip instead, basing themselves in Port Elizabeth and visiting Addo Elephant National Park first. Our Port Elizabeth travel guide covers the city’s Blue Flag beaches and the practicalities of using it as a base, and our Addo Elephant Park full day tour is the usual way people fit the park in before heading north.
Makhanda, still widely signposted as Grahamstown, is a university town with a dense core of 1820 Settler architecture and the annual National Arts Festival, usually held in late June and early July. From there, Hogsback climbs into the Amathole Mountains — indigenous forest, waterfalls, cool misty weather and a reputation, disputed by scholars but loved by hostel noticeboards, as an inspiration for Tolkien’s landscapes. Hogsback is a classic case of a place reachable only by shuttle from the main road.
East London is the only river port in the country and the practical gateway to the Wild Coast proper. Most backpackers skip the city itself and continue 40 minutes up the coast to Chintsa, where a long arc of empty beach, a lagoon and a cluster of long-established hostels make it the single most popular stop on this corridor. Surf lessons, horse riding on the beach and village-based community projects are the standard activities. Travelers who intend to stay two nights routinely stay five.
Mthatha is the transfer point, not the destination. The Nelson Mandela Museum in town and the Mandela homestead at Qunu, just off the N2 to the south, are both worth an hour if your timing allows.
From the Shell Ultra City on the edge of Mthatha, hostel shuttles run down to Coffee Bay. The long-running shuttle operated by Coffee Shack leaves Coffee Bay late morning and waits at the garage for the afternoon buses before heading back. Plan on roughly 1.5 hours each way.
Coffee Bay itself is a small village between green hills and a river mouth. The main walk is the day hike to Hole in the Wall, a detached cliff with a wave-cut arch through it that the local Xhosa name, esiKhaleni, renders as “the place of sound”. Allow a full day on foot in each direction, or take the shuttle one way. Further south, Bulungula and Mpande offer community-owned lodges where the village, not an operator, holds the equity.
Port St Johns sits at the mouth of the Mzimvubu River between two huge sandstone gates. It is humid, subtropical and slower than anywhere else on the route. North of there, the N2 runs inland through Kokstad before dropping back to the coast at Port Shepstone and running up the South Coast into Durban.
| Option | What it suits | Realistic drawbacks |
|---|---|---|
| Self-drive hire car | Travelers who want full control of timing and are comfortable on rural roads | Potholes and livestock on the R61 and R411, strong advice against night driving, one-way drop-off fees, fuel and tolls add up quickly for one or two people |
| Intercity coach plus hostel shuttle | Budget travelers moving between two or three fixed points | Terminals and petrol-station stops rather than door-to-door, timings often very early or very late, every off-highway village needs a separate shuttle booked in advance |
| Hostel-to-hostel shuttle chains | Travelers who commit to the Wild Coast hostels and let them arrange the links | Limited frequency, not a single ticket, you are coordinating several operators yourself |
| Domestic flight Port Elizabeth to Durban | Travelers short on time who only want the two cities | Skips the entire coast, which is the reason to do this route at all |
| Organised overland tour | Travelers who want it all planned and are happy with a fixed itinerary | Highest cost, no flexibility to stay longer anywhere you like |
Intercity coach operators do serve the main N2 towns, and they are a legitimate way to cover ground if you are confident navigating South African terminals independently and do not mind arriving at a garage outside town. They do not pick up or drop off at your accommodation, and they do not stop at the small coastal villages.
For most travelers the realistic 2026 shape of a South African trip is this: use the Garden Route as the backbone, then decide whether to add the Wild Coast as a separate, self-assembled leg.
The reason the Garden Route works as a backbone is that every logistical problem described above is already solved there. A single Cape Town to Port Elizabeth pass covers fourteen stops with pickup and drop-off at your hotel or hostel at each one, which replaces roughly ten separate taxi journeys and removes the need to find a terminal in a city you do not know. BazBus buses run every day between October and February, and Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday between March and September, so the next bus is never far away. Unlimited travel passes run 8, 14 and 21 days; the 14 day travel pass from Cape Town is the most common choice for travelers who then continue independently.
Across the network we carry a mix that surprises people: our average passenger is between 25 and 35, but we regularly carry families and travelers in their seventies and eighties, and more than 30% of our passengers are couples. Our on-time arrival rate sits at 98.5%, which in a country where distances are long and roads are rural is the number we are proudest of.
If you want the full step-by-step of how the pass system works before you plan the independent legs, our guide on how BazBus works for first-time riders covers booking, pickups and changing dates on the road.
The Wild Coast is subtropical and summer-rainfall. December to February is hot, humid and busy with South African holidaymakers, and the dirt roads suffer most after heavy rain. March to May is the sweet spot — warm sea, settled weather, fewer people. June to August is dry and mild inland but the sea is cold and some village shuttles run less often. September to November brings green hills, wildflowers and the tail of the southern right whale season along the coast.
Does BazBus run from Port Elizabeth to Durban in 2026?
No. The active network is the Garden Route hop-on hop-off service between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, plus day trips from Cape Town and Port Elizabeth and Kruger safari packages. The Port Elizabeth to Durban corridor and the Wild Coast stops are not on the current schedule, and we do not sell a pass that implies otherwise. If you see an older third-party listing describing a Cape Town to Johannesburg hop-on hop-off pass, it is describing a historical network rather than the 2026 one. Your Wild Coast leg needs to be assembled from hire car, intercity coach plus hostel shuttles, or a private transfer.
How many days should I allow for Port Elizabeth to Durban?
Seven to ten days is the sensible range if you want the coast rather than the highway. A workable shape is two nights in Chintsa, two or three in Coffee Bay, one or two in Port St Johns and a night in Durban, with a travel day between each. You can do it in three days if you drive hard and treat it as a transit, but at that point the flight is the better use of your time and money. The single most common mistake is budgeting for the driving hours and forgetting that each off-highway village adds three to four hours of shuttle time in each direction.
Is the Wild Coast safe for solo and solo female travelers?
The Wild Coast’s backpacker lodges have hosted solo travelers for decades and the hostel-to-hostel shuttle culture exists precisely because people move between them alone. The main risks on this route are road-related rather than crime-related: rural roads with livestock, pedestrians and potholes, and poor lighting after dark. The standard advice from everyone who works this coast is to not drive or travel at night, to book your shuttle in advance rather than improvising at Mthatha, and to let your next accommodation know your expected arrival time so somebody notices if you do not turn up.
Can I combine the Wild Coast with the Garden Route on one ticket?
Not currently. They are two separate pieces of planning in 2026. Most travelers run the Garden Route first on a single hop-on hop-off pass, finish in Port Elizabeth, and then switch to independently arranged transport for the Wild Coast. Doing it in that order has a practical advantage: the Garden Route section gives you two weeks to get comfortable with South African travel, pick up advice from drivers and other passengers, and firm up your Wild Coast bookings before you need them.
What should I book in advance versus on arrival?
Book your Wild Coast accommodation and the associated shuttles in advance, especially between mid-December and mid-January and over Easter, because the lodges are small and the shuttle seats are finite. Activities in Coffee Bay and Chintsa — surf lessons, guided hikes, village visits — can be arranged on arrival at the lodge without any real risk of missing out.
This article describes our service status and the independent transport landscape as at October 2026; shuttle timetables on the Wild Coast change with road conditions and season, and third-party coach schedules are revised several times a year, so confirm every connection directly with the operator or your accommodation within 48 hours of travel. We have deliberately not included passenger testimonials in this guide because our verified reviews relate to the Garden Route network we currently operate rather than to the Wild Coast corridor — for firsthand accounts of this route, hostel noticeboards and recent trip reports from the Chintsa and Coffee Bay lodges are a better source than anything we could claim.
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