Garden Route

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.

European contact here predates anywhere else in the country. Bartolomeu Dias landed at Mossel Bay on 3 February 1488, and in 1501 Pedro de Ataide left an account of a shipwreck in a shoe hung from a milkwood tree beside the spring; the tree still stands and letters posted under it are still franked. Older still: at Pinnacle Point, Curtis Marean's team from Arizona State University excavated middens, processed ochre and bladelet tools dated to roughly 164,000 years ago, among the earliest evidence anywhere of modern human behaviour.

Timber cut the route's modern shape. George Rex took the loan rights to Melkhoutkraal in 1804, the forests behind Knysna were felled for shipbuilding and railway sleepers, and the elephants that once ranged from Wilderness to the Tsitsikamma were shot out; a camera-trap survey published in 2019 found a single surviving female. Protection arrived late. The Tsitsikamma marine protected area was declared in 1964 over 60 kilometres of shoreline, and on 6 March 2009 SANParks merged Tsitsikamma, Wilderness and the Knysna National Lake Area into the 1,210 square kilometre Garden Route National Park.

Mossel Bay and Wilderness — the western gateway

Mossel Bay is 380 kilometres and four hours from Cape Town, with the Dias Museum built around the Post Office Tree. Inland, Gondwana Private Game Reserve runs 11,000 hectares of fynbos hills with free-roaming Big Five and no malaria: the closest Big Five to Cape Town, though not a substitute for the Eastern Cape. East of George the road drops through the Kaaimans gorge into Wilderness, where the Touw River meets Island Lake, Langvlei and Rondevlei. George holds the airport and Fancourt, whose three Gary Player courses include The Links, host of the tied 2003 Presidents Cup.

Knysna — the estuary, the forest and the Heads

Knysna sits on a warm-water estuary that opens to the sea between two sandstone headlands, the Heads, across a bar that has drowned enough boats to keep its reputation. The western head is the private Featherbed Nature Reserve, reached only by boat, and the crossing through the Heads is the town's one real set piece; Thesen Island and Leisure Isle hold the better addresses. This is the stronghold of the Knysna seahorse, Hippocampus capensis, found only here and in the Swartvlei and Keurbooms systems, and over 280 bird species have been recorded in the forests behind.

Plettenberg Bay

Portuguese navigators called it Bahia Formosa; Cape governor Baron Joachim van Plettenberg renamed it after himself in 1779. Eight kilometres south, the Robberg peninsula runs out to sea as a CapeNature reserve with three circular walks, the longest 9.2 kilometres and about four hours. Nelson Bay Cave on its flank records Middle Stone Age occupation beyond 100,000 years, and a Cape fur seal colony packs the rocks below. Southern right whales are present July to December, Bryde's whales are resident year-round, and three dolphin species use the bay. This is the honeymoon and repeat-client base, and the only place on the route with real depth of bed stock: The Plettenberg above the beach, Tsala Treetop Lodge and Hunter's Country House in the forest, Kurland at The Crags.

Tsitsikamma and Storms River — the wild eastern end

Tsitsikamma is a Khoekhoe name usually rendered as place of much water, and the section protects 80 kilometres of coast where the mountains fall into the sea. Storms River Mouth is the focus, with a rest camp and a suspension bridge over the gorge; the Otter Trail runs 44 kilometres from there to Nature's Valley over five days and four huts. A boardwalk off the N2 reaches the Big Tree, an Outeniqua yellowwood 36.6 metres tall and roughly a thousand years old. Bloukrans Bridge carries the N2 216 metres above the river marking the provincial boundary; the bungee there has run since 1997 and is still the highest bridge jump in the world.

Oudtshoorn and the Klein Karoo — over the pass into another country

An hour north of George the Outeniqua Pass climbs out of the forest belt into semi-desert. Oudtshoorn was founded in 1848 and made its money on ostrich feathers across two booms, 1865 to 1870 and 1900 to 1914, when feathers ranked behind only gold, diamonds and wool among South African exports. The sandstone feather palaces survive; the market collapsed in 1914. The Cango Caves, in the Swartberg foothills, were rediscovered in 1780 and run to more than four kilometres of surveyed chambers, about a quarter of it open. Book the hour-long heritage tour, never the adventure tour, for this clientele. Route 62 runs inland through Montagu, Barrydale and Ladismith to Calitzdorp; coming in that way and out over the pass beats doubling back.

The Eastern Cape reserves — Big Five extension

The Garden Route has no serious Big Five country on it apart from Gondwana. Two to three hours beyond Storms River the Eastern Cape thicket reserves do: Shamwari, 25,000 hectares an hour from Gqeberha; Amakhala, some 12,000 hectares ninety minutes north of the airport; and Kwandwe, on about 30 kilometres of the Great Fish River near Makhanda, with four small camps and both black and white rhino. All are malaria-free.