Port St Johns hillside bungalow

Port St Johns is South Africa's Wild Coast at its most theatrical. The town sits where the Umzimvubu River pushes out through a pair of enormous sandstone cliffs — Mount Thesiger and Mount Sullivan — into a hot, humid, jungle-clad coastline that could easily be mistaken for parts of Central America. It is culturally rich, occasionally rough around the edges, and dramatically cheaper than the more developed South African coast further south. This two-bedroom, 75 square-metre bungalow sits on a hillside lot above the river, six hundred metres from Second Beach and a couple of minutes' drive from the town centre.

The house is a simple older Port St Johns build — plastered brick with a corrugated iron roof, timber ceilings, polished concrete floors, and a covered stoep that catches the afternoon breeze off the Indian Ocean. Inside there are two bedrooms, a small bathroom and a functional open kitchen-living room. It benefits from established fruit trees on the lot — pawpaw, banana, guava, mango — and a garden that mostly looks after itself in the subtropical climate. Municipal water and power are connected; solar backup and a JoJo tank would be sensible additions for peace of mind through load shedding.

The surrounding coast is the drawcard. First Beach at the river mouth is a short walk away and is best used for river swimming, launching small boats and watching the fish trawlers work the bar. Second Beach is a moody, cliff-backed crescent five minutes' drive south — beautiful, atmospheric and often used for filming — while Third Beach and the Silaka Nature Reserve are a short 4x4 track further on. The forested cliffs, waterfalls and small Xhosa fishing villages of the surrounding Pondoland coast are some of the most spectacular in Africa and largely still undeveloped.

Foreign nationals can buy freehold property in South Africa, and Port St Johns has a small but active market of long-term owners. The town has a good Spar supermarket, a hardware store, a hospital, a few cafés and lively local markets. Mthatha's airport is about 90 minutes inland with daily flights to Johannesburg. Living here is genuinely inexpensive, deeply connected to Xhosa culture, and rewards buyers who prefer atmosphere and adventure over polish. It's the Wild Coast in the truest sense — for the price of a small car in Europe.