For affordable family holidays, endless beaches and friendly folk, the Eastern Cape coast is difficult to beat.
Its villages began life as clusters of holiday shacks for farmers. Now they're much more elegant, but they go to sleep during school terms and bounce back into life at Easter and Christmas. If you were once part of those youthful summers of madness, the memory never dims.
Cheap linoleum, broom-scuffed cupboards, drooping lace curtains, a handy fly swatter, and the sound of the sea - details recalled now in pure nostalgia for my many school holidays in the Eastern Cape.
These days, however, 1970s beach cottage decor is hard to find, especially the orange melamine counter tops and badly hung reproductions of the Scottish Lake District in gold frames. And the faint whiff of mothballs.
Cannon Rocks Holiday Resort has it all - its cottages should be preserved in amber and not rented to anyone under 50. I came upon them on a quest to recapture my Eastern Cape, not among the smart B&Bs or pricey holiday hotels, but in farm cottages, campsites and coastal dorps that explode into life in the school holidays and slump into blissful torpor in between.
My first stop, however, was further east at Kasouga, a cluster of shacks along a lagoon between Kenton-on-Sea and Port Alfred.
For years we'd holidayed in an oversized packing crate, sweeping away battalions of spiders on our arrival. It was still there, but abandoned by humans and grey with triumphant webs. I could see why: it was made mostly from asbestos, then in vogue, now declared a lethal cladding.
So I headed up the hill to Oribi Haven on Kasouga Farm, owned by a long line of Curries.
The homestead was built in 1885 and Jenny and Walter, the present generation, have added two comfortable cottages, one under the wings of a huge fig tree, the other with views over hills that roll down to the sea.
We sat on their wide stoep, sipping rooibos tea and chatting about cricket, cows, fluctuating rainfall and the wildlife that's returning to the Eastern Cape. Later, we hiked along the beach to Ship Rock to drink beer and reminisce.
My memory of the Eastern Cape coast was cattle and pineapples, so I was interested to see how it had transformed itself into a wilderness preserve.
The Kariega Private Game Reserve - a 9 000ha reclamation of former fields for the Big Five and other animals - gives you the sense of what the area must once have been. It was thick with river bush and animals.
There are chalets with extra-low off-season rates and a fancy lodge for those who pay in dollars and euros. Nearby is the new Sibuya Game Reserve with a Botswana-style lodge that can be reached only by boat up the Kariega River. It costs a bit, but you get spoiled silly.
Near Alexandria is another new lodge, Nduna, also on reconstituted ranch land, that is being developed under the care of owners Gavin and Lee-Ann Ingram. We bounced through the property on quadbikes (there are no predators), then had tea under the beady eye of a tame ostrich named Esmerelda.
After my wild tour (and being bitten by pepper ticks), things fell apart a bit. I was taken captive by some old friends and spirited away to a cottage on an island, Inkwezi, near Port Alfred. There I was fed extravagant amounts of firewater. I'd forgotten how injudiciously Eastern Capers love to party.
Inkwezi Island Cottage is the brainchild of a geography teacher-turned-farmer, François Vosloo. He thought people would like privacy, so he built the cottage on an island in the farm dam, linked to the outside world by a log bridge.
When I eventually shooed the revellers home and turned in, all I could hear was the chitter of frogs and the call of a fiery-necked nightjar. In the morning, the alarm clock was a fish eagle.
I escaped Port Alfred for the calmer waters of Kenton-on-Sea and the wild, bush-hugged cottages of Woodlands. The place is pet-friendly, and there are seven elegant cottages surrounded by people-habituated birds, including an occasional Narina Trogon.
Bev Selwyn-Smith knows everyone, organises anything and is a good start for exploring the area. She shooed me off on what she called the Poor Man's Game Drive, a public road to Southwell off the R343 that runs between two private game reserves.
It cost nothing and I saw zebras, giraffes, rhinos, eland, wildebeest, bontebok, kudus and a jackal buzzard within 20 minutes.
Not long afterwards, I was directed across the road from Woodlands to visit the bird illustrator, Graeme Arnott, whom birders will know from his illustrations in Roberts and many other guides.
With true Eastern Cape modesty, he seemed mildly surprised by my visit - why would anyone want to meet a famous bird artist? - but showed me round his studio.
Picture after picture was hauled out of drawers, all utterly brilliant. Drooling over a pennant-winged nightjar in the moonlight, I dared to ask how much.
"Oh, about R5 000," he replied.
"What! You could get R20 000 or more for that."
"Oh dear." He looked worried. "Do you think I'm underpricing a bit?"
Graeme's son, Jonathan, is an artist of another kind - equestrian. He runs horse outrides along the beach at Bushman's River and has some fine steeds well adapted to galloping through the surf.
About then the weather turned bleak, so I sought refuge in the company of Clive Gardner. He's heading for 90 but as sharp as a Joseph Rogers pocketknife and lives at the mouth of the Bushman's River, in a cottage that excites historians.
It was bought by his great grandfather for £28 in 1895 and is filled with memorabilia of Eastern Cape life spanning more than a century. Interesting objects include several doors from the wreck of the sailing ship, Volo.
Clive's son, Bevan, who runs boat trips to Bird Island and up Bushman's River, offered to show me his Big Crab photograph if I met him at the Sandbar floating restaurant later. You needed a drink in hand, evidently, to appreciate the crustacean's size.
The Sandbar turned out to be a watering hole and eatery run by Tim Knight, who specialises in seafood. It's a large barge, now permanently anchored after mishaps while negotiating river sandbars. I was told that the fishing is good right off its deck. Bevan's crab was a monster. I got the picture, but did not escape the beer.
Even more dangerous entertainment was on offer at Stanley's Restaurant the following evening. It's where you meet the boets and swaers (brothers and cousins) who drink unhealthy amounts of liquor and tell tall tales. The food's good and the company a cultural dipping tank.
The restaurant is run by Rod and Dot Long, who were mourning the departure to wilder territory of Roger the Red Pig, a tame sow that had been getting more out of hand than the patrons.
A fine lunchtime eatery is The Red Apple, just across Bushman's River. There's fresh, imaginative, healthy scoff at reasonable prices.
Before heading further west, I checked in at McGinty's B&B, run by Lena and Tienie Muller. Great African wanderers, they worked in Botswana, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, but decided that Bushman's is best. They have two cottages and a separate kitchen in their yard.
I took the rondavel, which has a bedroom suite from the 1950s and pictures of faraway places on the walls. The en suite bathrooms, on the other hand, are 21st century.
The couple are pet-friendly, feed all the birds and have tortoises wandering the garden. McGinty is their ageing Jack Russell. Their other pooch is a cheeky Scottish terrier, McTavish. Lena does good, old-fashioned home cooking on request. It was like staying with my mum.
After that, the road took me westwards to Cannon Rocks. It's a faintly disturbing place off-season, with the eerie emptiness of a village fed a sleeping potion by a wicked witch.
The beaches are stupendous swaths of golden sand that, right then, were marked only by seagull and crab footprints.