Gorgo, Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Eastern Cape

Provincial capital: Bhisho

The Eastern Cape is South Africa's great in-between — where the winter-rainfall Cape meets the summer-rainfall interior, and the country's most biome-diverse province, with seven of its nine biomes inside one set of borders. It runs from dry Karoo to Afrotemperate forest and an untamed coastline, takes in the malaria-free elephants of Addo, and is the birthplace of Nelson Mandela.

Biome: Seven biomes; heart of the Albany Thicket
Climate: Transitional; rain fairly even, mild coast
Best time: Aug–Sep — dry, mild, good game viewing

Biodiversity & landscape

The Eastern Cape is South Africa's most biome-diverse province, containing seven of the country's nine biomes and forming the heartland of the Albany Thicket — a dense, often near-impenetrable shrubland of evergreen and succulent, frequently spiny plants. Along a single west-to-east gradient the province shifts from arid Karoo to lush Afrotemperate forest, grassland and a long Indian Ocean coast, supporting exceptionally high local endemism. Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) even markets itself as a "five-biome city."

Fauna

This is the home of South Africa's malaria-free "Big Game" country. Addo Elephant National Park — the country's third-largest national park, at around 1,640 km² — was proclaimed in 1931 to save a last handful of elephants, and today protects several hundred, along with the rest of the Big Five and, in its marine section, southern right whales and great white sharks. Addo is promoted as a "Big 7" destination and shelters the largest surviving population of the flightless dung beetle.

Flora

The province's botanical signature is spekboom (Portulacaria afra), a leaf-succulent that dominates the Albany Thicket, alongside Afrotemperate forest, fynbos, grassland and Karoo elements. The Garden Route National Park, which the Eastern Cape shares with the Western Cape, protects some of South Africa's largest tracts of continuous indigenous forest.

Where to go

Addo Elephant National Park — malaria-free Big Five (and "Big 7") within easy reach of Gqeberha.
Tsitsikamma / Storms River — the wild eastern Garden Route, with its coastal forest and the Storms River Mouth suspension bridge.
Jeffreys Bay — one of the world's celebrated surfing points, home of the Supertubes right-hander.
The Wild Coast — some 250 km of cliff-lined, largely undeveloped former-Transkei shore.
Mandela heritage — the museums and villages of the province where Nelson Mandela was born.

Weather & when to visit

Sitting between the winter-rainfall Cape and the summer-rainfall interior, the Eastern Cape has no strict rainy season — rain is spread fairly evenly through the year, and temperatures are mild, with summers around 16–26°C and winters around 7–20°C. That makes it a genuine year-round destination. For wildlife, the drier winter months give the best game viewing, and late winter — August into September — is a comfortable compromise of mild days and thinning bush.