What makes it special
The Garden Route is 300 kilometres of coast between Witsand in the Western Cape and the Storms River in the Eastern Cape, and it is where South Africa stops being dry. Indian Ocean weather piles against the Outeniqua and Tsitsikamma mountains and drops rain in every month of the year, making this the only region in Africa with no dry season. Below the peaks: Afromontane forest, fynbos, a chain of lakes and estuaries, close to 300 bird species. UNESCO added the region to its World Network of Biosphere Reserves in 2017.
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By air. Three airports matter. George (GRJ) is the route's own, an hour from Knysna, handling close to a million passengers a year on Airlink, CemAir and FlySafair services from Cape Town (CPT) and Johannesburg (JNB). At the eastern end, Chief Dawid Stuurman International in Gqeberha (PLZ, renamed from Port Elizabeth International in February 2021) serves the Eastern Cape reserves.
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February to April — the sweet spot. Domestic school holidays end in mid-January, so February arrives warm, settled and empty, with the sea at its warmest and the estuaries clear. Days sit in the mid-twenties and the walking on Robberg and in the Tsitsikamma is at its best.
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