Kasouga, also known as Kasuka, is a small village in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, situated near the mouth of the Kasouga River, approximately 11 km north-east of Kenton-on-Sea via the R72 Provincial Route.
The village is named after the Kasouga River. The name is derived from Khoekhoen and means ‘place of many leopards’.
Kasouga falls within the Ndlambe Local Municipality and the Sarah Baartman District Municipality.
The little enclave of Kasouga has a remote beach stretching east into kilometres of sand dunes before reaching Port Alfred.
Kasouga is a declared Heritage Site; part of it is still the original 1825 Bovey farm, split up in 1880, and now considered the oldest resort in the Eastern Cape.
The James Ford Hall, built in 1925, still remains in town, often used for meetings. Drape yourself on the steps, and you’ve got a vintage photograph for Instagram without even needing a filter.
Only a small number of private holiday homes lie on the edge of this small river, and very little development means that it is one of the least affected and commercial spaces in the Eastern Cape, other than the Wild Coast.
And those who have homes here protect them fiercely (you won’t find them advertised on Airbnb). Most of them are set either in the quiet forest behind the beach dunes or with views of the forest, river, or sea.
And there is no end of things to do at Kasouga, if you can remember how to do traditional, no gadget holidays – sandboarding, building sandcastles, canoeing, fishing in the river and sea, walking for miles, or wandering the coastal forest in which you will find bushbuck, blue duiker, and a huge variety of birds.
The rock pools, the miles of sand, and the forested dunes that protect the enclave from the prevailing sea winds make it idyllic.
