The N2 Wild Coast Road: What's Actually Built, and What It Means for Your Trip

There is a bridge going up about six kilometres from my house that will, when it's finished, be the tallest in Africa. I can't see it from my stoep, but I've watched the access roads carve their way down into the valley over the last few years, and I've heard the trial blasting roll up the gorge like distant thunder.

Every few months a headline about it does the rounds, and my inbox fills up with variations of the same question: is the new road open yet, and should I wait for it?

The honest answers are no, and no. But the full picture is more interesting than that, and if you're planning a trip to this coast, some of it genuinely matters. So here it is, as of July 2026, from a retired old man who lives at the end of the road in question.

The Short Answer

The N2 Wild Coast Road is not open and won't be for years. Its two megabridges are both delayed: Msikaba reached 70% in July 2026 with SANRAL now targeting 2029, and the Mtentu bridge has no publicly revised completion date at all. Nothing about your journey here changes in the meantime, you still come via the R61 through Port Edward, exactly as described in How to Get to Mtentu. And no, don't wait for the road. The coast is better now than it will be after it opens.

What is the N2 Wild Coast Road?

Deep green valley and forested hillsides rolling down toward the sea on the Wild Coast, Eastern Cape, South Africa

It's a 410 km stretch of new and upgraded national road running between the N2 Gonubie Interchange near East London and the Mtamvuna River bridge at Mzamba, right where the Eastern Cape meets KwaZulu-Natal. It's run by SANRAL, the national roads agency, and it has been talked about, fought over, and slowly built for well over a decade.

The point of it is simple. At the moment, if you want to drive between Durban and East London, the N2 swings a long way inland via Kokstad and Mthatha, because the direct coastal line is interrupted by a series of enormous river gorges that nobody had built across. The new route goes straight down the coast instead. When it's done, it's expected to cut up to 85 km off the trip and save as much as three hours.

To do that, it has to cross two gorges that are, frankly, absurd. Hence the two megabridges, and hence the delays.

When will the N2 Wild Coast Road open?

Not for several years, and nobody can give you a firm date.

The Msikaba bridge is being targeted for 2029. The Mtentu bridge has no publicly announced completion date at all. Until both are standing, the coastal route cannot open, so 2029 is the earliest realistic answer and I would not plan a holiday around it.

Be careful what you read on this, because the reporting is contradictory and people have noticed. If you go looking, you'll find articles still ranking that say the road's flagship bridge is "set to open in 2026." You'll also find much more recent reporting saying 2029. Both are on the internet at the same time, which is how you end up with people emailing a hiking guide to ask what's actually true.

It's also worth knowing how much this project has already slipped before you trust any single number. Msikaba was contracted to finish in 2022, then 2025, and is now aimed at 2029. That's a seven-year drift on one bridge.

Why is the N2 Wild Coast Road delayed?

In March 2026, SANRAL confirmed publicly what had been obvious on the ground for a while: both bridges are badly behind. Their spokesperson, Lwando Mahlasela, put a large part of it down to something outside the roads agency's control entirely, saying the project "is currently experiencing the impact of the partial collapse of South Africa's steel fabrication sector."

That's the story. Not corruption, not a funding collapse, not another round of the community disputes that halted work at the Mtentu site back in 2024. The steel that the bridge decks are made of is fabricated in Mpumalanga, and that industry is in trouble.

What's the status of the Msikaba bridge?

The two concrete pylons of the Msikaba Bridge standing above the gorge during construction, with a tower crane alongside, N2 Wild Coast Road, Eastern Cape, South Africa

The Msikaba bridge crosses the Msikaba River gorge near Lusikisiki, and when it's finished it will be the longest cable-stayed bridge in Africa: 580 m across, standing close to 200 m above the valley floor.

As of 22 July 2026, it is 70% complete. SANRAL says it's now targeting 2029, and Mahlasela was reasonably specific about why they believe that number: the contractor plans to begin launching the bridge deck at the beginning of 2027, with help from international specialists from Freyssinet.

I'd treat 2029 as a hope rather than a promise. But the 70% figure is real, and deck launching is the genuinely hard part they're about to start, so it isn't an empty number either.

What's the status of the Mtentu bridge?

Artist's impression of the Mtentu Bridge, a tall concrete viaduct spanning a green Eastern Cape valley on the N2 Wild Coast Road, South Africa

This is the one on my doorstep, and it's the more spectacular of the two by some margin.

Its status is harder to pin down than Msikaba's, and I'd rather tell you that than invent a number. The current contract was awarded in November 2022 and originally aimed at the end of 2027. As of SANRAL's March 2026 update, no revised completion date had been publicly announced. Progress has been held up by geotechnical, drainage and slope-stability problems encountered while building the snaking access roads down to the pier positions on both sides of the gorge, which anyone who has walked that terrain will find entirely unsurprising.

The road sections either side are moving better. The Msikaba-to-Mtentu section was reported as over halfway done and only a couple of weeks behind schedule, and the Lingeni-to-Msikaba section is early in a 45-month programme.

How tall is the Mtentu bridge?

Roughly 223 metres above the valley floor, which will make it the tallest bridge in Africa and in the southern hemisphere, taking that title from the Bloukrans bridge in the Western Cape.

It will run about 1,132 m across the Mtentu River gorge, with a 260 m main span built by balanced cantilever, one of the longest of its kind anywhere in the world. One of its piers, Pier 9, will be around 141 m on its own. That's a forty-storey building, standing in a river valley where until recently there was nothing but forest and baboons.

Can you visit the Mtentu bridge construction site?

No. No visitors are permitted on the bridge site, and there is no public viewing point or visitor centre.

You can see the works from parts of the surrounding hills if you happen to be walking them, but the construction area itself is closed and it isn't somewhere to plan a day trip around. If you want a reason to be in this valley on foot, the nearby Mtentu waterfalls are the better target, and they're genuinely reachable.

Do the roadworks affect getting to the Wild Coast?

No. You travel exactly as you would have five years ago, and exactly as you will for the next several. Nothing has changed and nothing is about to.

From Durban, you come down the N2 south and then the R61 towards Port Edward, roughly 180 km and three to three and a half hours. If you're driving between Durban and East London, you still take the long inland diversion through Kokstad and Mthatha. Our hikers still start at the Wild Coast Sun and cross the Mzamba suspension bridge on foot, which is a different bridge over a different river, and considerably more charming than anything SANRAL is building.

The full breakdown of shuttles, airports, parking and where to draw your last cash is in How to Get to Mtentu. If you're coming from overseas and working out the wider logistics, start with The Complete Guide to the Wild Coast or, for British travellers specifically, How to Plan a South Africa Hiking Holiday from the UK.

Will the N2 Wild Coast Road shorten the drive from Durban?

Barely, if you're heading for the Wild Coast itself. This surprises people, so it's worth being precise about.

The big saving, up to 85 km and as much as three hours, is on the long run between Durban and East London, which currently detours a long way inland via Kokstad and Mthatha. If that's your journey, the new road is a genuine transformation.

But the leg most Wild Coast visitors actually drive is Durban to Port Edward, and that one is already direct. It will still be about 180 km and about three hours after the road opens, near enough unchanged. So if you've been holding off on a trip because you're waiting for a faster drive, you're waiting for something that was never going to arrive.

Will the new road ruin the Wild Coast?

A river winding between steep green slopes toward the sea at Mtentu on the Wild Coast, South Africa

I get asked this a lot, usually by people who mean it kindly, and I want to be careful here because it's not really my question to answer.

The Wild Coast is wild partly because it's hard to reach, and it's hard to reach partly because it was deliberately underdeveloped for a very long time under a government that had no interest in the people who live here. Romanticising bad roads is an easy thing to do when you're a visitor who leaves after four days. It's a different matter if you're trying to get a child to a hospital, or produce to a market.

The families we walk with, stay with and eat with along this coast are mostly in favour of the road, and the project has been putting significant money into local wages and employment. That counts for a great deal more than my nostalgia does.

Will it change things? Certainly. More traffic, more day visitors, more pressure on the places that are currently quiet because getting to them takes effort. My honest guess is that the change will be real but slower and patchier than people expect, and that the coastline itself, the gorges, the beaches, the estuaries, will still be there doing what it does. There's a longer version of this argument in Supporting Local Communities.

Should you wait for the road before visiting?

No. Come now.

Not out of any panic that it's all about to be spoiled, but for the simpler reason that "now" is a decade of trips you'd be giving up in exchange for a slightly shorter drive. The road, when it opens, will save you a couple of hours between two cities you probably weren't planning to drive between anyway. It will do almost nothing for the journey most of our guests actually make, which is Durban to Port Edward.

And there is something worth catching about this particular window. For a few more years, you can stand at the Mtentu river mouth at the end of a four-day walk and look upriver at a gorge with the beginnings of the tallest bridge in Africa in it, and otherwise nothing at all. That combination doesn't last.

If you want to know when in the year to come, the best time to hike the Wild Coast breaks it down season by season, and what to budget for a South Africa hiking holiday covers the money side.

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Line of hikers crossing the Mzamba suspension bridge single file into the green hills at the start of the Mtentu Ramble, Wild Coast, South Africa

In a few years there will be a ribbon of concrete two hundred metres above the Mtentu river, and people will drive over it at 120 km an hour without ever knowing what's underneath. Some of them will stop. Most won't.

The ones who walk down into that valley instead will still get the version I got when I arrived here more than a decade ago, and honestly, that's the bit that doesn't change no matter what SANRAL builds.

From R4,700pp in 2026, four days, all meals, local guides, and only a day pack to carry.

See upcoming Mtentu Ramble departures →

Msikaba bridge construction photograph by Caracal Rooikat, released under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.