Buccaneers Beach Lodge cottages set among indigenous coastal forest above Chintsa bay at golden hour

Chintsa · Wild Coast · Est. 1981

Slow down. You’re on the Wild Coast.

Eight hectares of indigenous forest, a lagoon at the bottom of the path and eighteen kilometres of empty beach. Family-run for four decades.

Check availability Where you’ll sleep

Scroll

Aerial view of Buccaneers Beach Lodge nestled in forest alongside the Chintsa lagoon

8 hectares of forest

Welcome to Buccs

A gem on the Wild Coast — best enjoyed slow and easy.

Buccaneers is not one thing. It is a deluxe sea-view suite with a private balcony, and it is a tent under a milkwood tree. It is a family in a cottage with the kids running down to the rock pools, and it is a backpacker who came for two nights and stayed a month.

What holds it together is the place itself: a hillside of indigenous coastal forest looking north over Chintsa bay, a wooden bridge across the lagoon, and a path down to sand that runs for eighteen kilometres without a building on it.

Read our story

Where you’ll sleep

From a sea-view suite to a tent in the dune bush

Nine kinds of room across the property, all of them a short walk from the same beach.

Private deck with a table and chairs looking out over Chintsa bay

Suites & tree houses

Sea view, private deck

Six deluxe north-facing en-suites and four upstairs tree houses, each with its own balcony over the bay.

See the rooms

Cottage patio with wicker chairs overlooking the lagoon at sunset

Cottages

Room for the whole family

Two- and three-bedroom self-catering cottages along the hillside, with a kitchen, a lounge and a patio of your own.

See the cottages

Wooden bunk beds with linen in the Blue Dorm at Buccaneers

Budget, dorms & camping

The way most of us started

Budget en-suites, a double cabin, two eight-bed dorms and a campsite in the dune bush with its own boma.

See the options

Empty beach with rippled sand stretching towards the headland under cloud

Days here

Surf in the morning, ride the beach at four, watch the sun go down from the deck.

Learn to surf with a local coach, kite the lagoon, canoe upriver, ride a horse across the sand, or do nothing at all in a hammock. Reception books the lot.

Things to do

A surfer riding a clean wave off Chintsa beach

Surfing

Lessons with board and wetsuit included — keep the kit for the rest of the day.

Horses being ridden along the water's edge on Chintsa beach

Beach horse rides

Through the Chintsa bush and out onto the sand, at any riding ability.

Kiteboarding

Flat water on the lagoon for learners, open ocean for everyone else.

A yoga class in the pagoda at Buccaneers

Yoga & massage

Classes in the pagoda on Fridays and Sundays, with retreats through the year.

Guests having breakfast on the verandah overlooking the bay

Eating & drinking

Three meals a day, and a bar named after the man who started it.

The View of Africa dining room does breakfast every morning and a dinner menu that rotates through Indian, Mexican, Italian and South African, cooked from scratch with what’s local.

Lee’s Pub opens at five, with pool tables and the bay laid out in front of you. In summer the pool bar runs as well — and it makes the best pizza in Chintsa.

Wet sand reflecting the dunes and sky at low tide

“A united and happy team — they welcome you with open hearts and arms.”

Richard Kidd · September 2021

The Price family

Since 1981

Anne and Lee Price went looking for somewhere to raise their children.

They spent six months of 1981 driving South Africa before they found an undeveloped stretch of beachfront at Chintsa, left Johannesburg behind and moved down with Sal and Sean to build on it.

For eleven years it was self-catering cottages for city families on their beach holiday. Then 1994 came, the world arrived to see the new South Africa, and Buccaneers became one of the country’s best-loved backpackers. The sea-view suites and the tree houses came later.

What hasn’t changed is that the owners are still here, still hosting, and still treating the place like a home people happen to stay in.

One of the original Buccaneers cottages photographed shortly after it was built in the 1980s — The first cottages, early 1980s

Guests and cars outside the cottages at Buccaneers in the 1980s — Beach holidays, before the backpackers

Guests relaxing on a deck at Buccaneers with the beach and sea behind them — The same view, forty years on

Finding us

Chintsa, forty minutes up the coast from East London

Getting here

East London airport is about 45 minutes away by road, with daily flights from Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. We’re signposted off the N2 at the Chintsa turn-off — call ahead and we’ll talk you in.

The beach and the lagoon

A path and a wooden bridge take you from reception across the Chintsa lagoon and onto the beach in a few minutes. Rock pools and a tidal pool are within walking distance.

What’s nearby

Olivewood golf course, Emerald Vale brewery, the Chintsa deli, a zipline through the gorge and a pottery studio for the kids — all inside fifteen minutes.

Pink and orange sunrise over the Chintsa lagoon

Come and stay

There is a room here for however you like to travel.

Check live availability, or send us your dates and we’ll come back to you with what we’ve got.

Check availability Send us your dates