Boknes

Boknes sits at the mouth of the Boknes River on the Eastern Cape Sunshine Coast, 19 km south-east of Alexandria and about 40 km from Port Alfred. It is part of the Ndlambe Local Municipality in the Sarah Baartman District. The village is small — mostly holiday homes — and has the low-key feel of a place that does not advertise itself. The lagoon where the Boknes River meets the sea is warm and protected, and the beach stretches away from it in both directions without the development you find further west along the coast.

The beach here was previously a Blue Flag certified beach, meaning the water quality and safety standards met international benchmarks. The lagoon is flat-calm and shallow enough for young children, and you can hire pedal boats and paddle upstream into the river mouth. For walkers, the stretch from Boknes south toward the headland takes you to the Dias Cross site — a replica of the padrao erected by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488, now sitting within the marine section of the Addo Elephant National Park. The hike is a few kilometres and fully on coastal trail.

Boknes borders the Woody Cape Section of the Greater Addo Elephant National Park on its landward side. That means game is close. Addo is a properly wild reserve with elephant, buffalo, and black rhino, and the park entrance at Woody Cape is the quieter, less visited option compared to the main gate near Addo town. Cannon Rocks, a few kilometres further east, is a world-class kite-surfing location if you are into that.

The village itself is unhurried and genuinely undeveloped. There are self-catering houses and a handful of local spots but no resort strip, no supermarkets, and no crowd. That is the point.