Take me to the river

Talking Heads’s liquid song of love and longing may be about a girl, but I couldn’t get their lyrics out of my head as I drove into Port Alfred, a sleepy town tucked into a curve of the glassy-green Kowie River just before it greets the Indian Ocean on the Eastern Cape’s Sunshine Coast. ‘Take me to the river, drop me in the water…’ could be the anthem of the laid-back folk living here, who seem to have a love affair with all things aquatic.

There are plenty of great beaches here, but the river is