The Hole-in-the-Wall is a tidal island -- a mass of sandstone and shale standing just offshore at the mouth of the Mpako River, about eight kilometers south of Coffee Bay on the Eastern Cape's Wild Coast. The sea has been working on this rock for millennia, and the arch it carved is large enough for a small sailboat to pass through with ease. At low tide, visitors can walk across the beach to the base of the formation, touching the rough sandstone walls of the opening and feeling the salt spray that pulses through it with each swell. The Wild Coast earns its name here: the Indian Ocean is relentless, the currents unpredictable, and the shoreline a continuous drama of headlands, river mouths, and wave-cut platforms stretching south toward the Great Kei River.

In the Xhosa telling, a young woman lived in a village on the shores of a coastal lagoon, separated from the open sea by the sheer cliff that now contains the arch. She fell in love with a man from the sea-people -- beings who dwelt beneath the waves. Her father, enraged by what he considered an unnatural bond, confined her to the village. But one night her lover came with his people. They rammed a massive fish head-first into the cliff, smashing a hole clean through the rock. Through this breach they streamed into the lagoon, singing and shouting, while the villagers fled in terror. Only the maiden stayed. She ran to her lover and was never seen again. Under certain wave conditions, the crack and boom of water slamming through the arch still carries inland. Those are the sea-people, the elders say, singing and shouting as they did on the night they came for her.

On 24 March 1593, the Portuguese carrack Santo Alberto ran aground near Hole-in-the-Wall. The ship was part of the carreira da India, the trade route between Lisbon and Goa that sent hundreds of vessels around the Cape of Good Hope -- and lost dozens of them to the Wild Coast's reefs and storms. Twenty-eight Portuguese sailors and 34 enslaved people drowned in the wreck; 125 sailors and 160 enslaved people made it to shore. Under the command of Nuno Velho Pereira, the survivors walked north along the coast and then inland, eventually reaching the Portuguese settlement at Maputo in Mozambique. The journey took months, crossing territory controlled by peoples who had no reason to welcome armed foreigners trudging through their land. That most of the survivors completed the march is remarkable. That the enslaved among them had no choice in the matter is worth remembering.

A small village shares the formation's name, offering basic accommodation to visitors who make the journey down the gravel roads from Coffee Bay or the N2 highway. This is the former Transkei, one of the apartheid-era homelands, and the infrastructure reflects decades of deliberate underinvestment. The landscape, however, is extravagant: green hills falling to rocky coves, river valleys thick with subtropical vegetation, and a coastline that has barely been developed because the roads to reach it discourage all but the determined. The Hole-in-the-Wall is the Wild Coast's most photographed landmark, yet it remains wonderfully uncrowded. Stand on the beach at sunset, watch the arch frame the last light on the Indian Ocean, and listen for the roaring. Whether it is the sea-people or just physics depends on what you choose to believe.