This is a coastline for those who like long, austere beaches littered with windswept dunes, bits of whale and seal bones, gulls, cormorants and not much else.

Fishing is serious stuff in these parts and although there are bed and breakfast establishments right along the coastline, they're far and few between and most visitors camp, as we did.

Should you find yourself in this part of the world round about World Cup time, especially in August, you'll have the additional pleasure of experiencing wild flowers appearing in their carpeted masses. It can happen virtually overnight - depending on the rains. Time your flower visit for roughly two months after the rains and you should be lucky.

We once found ourselves in a remote plek along the coastline - Kleinsee, situated where the Buffels River meets the sea. I remember we'd been in Springbok visiting a geologist friend. The flowers were here and there, but it seemed they were nothing spectacular - and then suddenly, virtually overnight, they popped up their heads and the countryside turned into a patchwork quilt of colour.

The Garden Route has always been sold as one of our top tourist areas. But drive slowly, trapping is endemic.

Do visit Mossel Bay, Plettenberg Bay and Nature's Valley. Even at this time of the year, the weather is mild and the beaches sensational.

The coastline, along the Western and Eastern Cape until you hit KwaZulu-Natal, is remarkable in its variety. The affluent traveller will be happy with the variety of 5-star accommodation available in some of our country's finest hotels and resorts and, thankfully, for the majority, there's a healthy sprinkling of affordable parks, reserves and resorts which still cater to locals.

The De Hoop Marine Reserve, Breede River Lodge, the village of Witsands, Still Bay, Little Brak River, the Wilderness National Park, Sedgefield, Goukamma and Nature's Valley are just a few of the gems that spring to mind.

Once, while visiting the Tsitsikamma National Park, we watched, for hours, a couple of Cape otters at the edge of the water. Seemingly unconscious of our presence, we felt privileged to share their space.

If you look at maps of our coastline, you can see how our history has fashioned our country. Where large numbers of colonialists put down their routes, development followed with speed, and towns and cities were built.

For obvious reasons, large rivers have played their part in peopling various areas but, despite that, it's still remarkable how much of the coast is relatively pristine.

The Eastern Cape, one of the country's poorest provinces, is also one of our most beautiful and the area from East London right up to Port St Johns is just waiting to be explored.

Small resorts and B&B's run by formerly disadvantaged communities are opening up everywhere and offer excellent holiday options for South Africans who want to travel and explore... but don't have large financial resources.

Journey this way and you'll discover beaches with clean sands and unbeatable swimming and surfing. You'll find tiny seaside villages where visitors are made to feel so welcome that they don't want to leave and the resorts and hotels at Haga-Haga, Mazeppa Bay, Qora Mouth, The Haven and Coffee Bay have to be some of the happiest in the world.

This is where you'll find cows, buck or hippos coming down to the beach to swim, where, if you're camping, you'll find fresh springs with sweet water. This is where you'll have locals sharing their knowledge of the best fishing spots, or offering to take you on hikes along the coastline for a small fee.

The coastline meanders upwards through KwaZulu-Natal and perhaps that's one of the most interesting provinces of all, for from Port Edwards through to Durban the coastline is one well-known seaside town after another.

Gautengers have been flooding to the South Coast forever and the remarkable thing about towns such as Ramsgate, Margate, Port Shepstone, Hibberdene, Scottburgh et al, is that beside the fact they're totally built up, the seaside atmosphere of a holiday town or village still remains.

We once stayed with friends who owned a small dilapidated cottage at Zinkawzi Bay. They kept begging us to buy a share for R10 000 (which way back was far more money than we could afford and, besides, we didn't want to be stuck in one place for our holidays). I heard recently that the same cottage (which admittedly has been tarted up somewhat,) went for R12 million).

That said, I'm still happier spending time in the St Lucia marine reserve - here you can play eye-spy with crocodile - camping at Sodwana and going for a scuba dive to check out the southern-most coral reefs in Africa.

For coastline perfection, Kosi Bay has it all. It's wild, wonderful and still unspoilt. Protected by the Maputuland marine reserve, this is a place of peace, flamingoes, hippos, dolphins, turtles and some of the best birding in the country.

Just across the border nestles Mozambique, but that's another country, another story.