Few places are as beautiful as the Garden Route in South Africa.

BY JAMES VAN GRAFF

Just a few hours out of Cape Town heading east is the garden route, one of most breathtaking wonderful places you can go and spend a week in.

It was November and we decided to head out for a bit of nature and adventuring in the eastern cape region. We’d put together a loosly drawn together plan and early in the morning set route for Oudtshoorn, our first stop on our Garden Route holiday. The drive took about six and a half hours through some absolutely stunning country side. Closer to Oudtschoorn, the land became more arid, almost desert like and the occasional ostrich made us all the more excited about getting to our first destination.

Reason being we were stopping at the Highgate Ostrich Show Farm, and were about embark on our first ever Ostrich riding experience. We saw the birds, learned about them, then got on them and rode around a bit – well if you can call being thrown into a wall riding, but it was heaps of fun nonetheless, and if you’re

Next stop was Mossel Bay, where we had a wonderful late lunch. If and when going to Mossel Bay (Mussel Bay) it’s recommended to eat the local mussels as they are fresh, they are plenty, are cheap, and are delicious. Afterward we headed down the coast and spent the evening in Knysna.

For the next few days – Knysna was the hub of our holiday, and from here we hit out on daily excursions on the garden route. I can honestly say that if here you have to, absolutely have to, try some of the following.

• Hike Tsitsikamma National Park – right on the water, this place is simply put amazing, the natural diversity, the caves, the rain forest. It’s for lack of a better word, breathtaking. We hiked along the path towards the waterfalls at the end of one of the trails, passing through jungle, coastal rocks, green caves. Just wow.
• Bungee the Bloukrans – the 3rd highest bungee in the world – that’s right, just outside of Tsitsikamma is a bridge on which you’ll undoubtedly cross once or twice on the Garden route. For all relative purposes, get there early as the wait can get up to a few hours easily if you arrive late.
• Visit Wilderness – aside from the Touw River Lagoon and its scenic beauty Wilderness offers kayaking / canoeing up the river, the water is warm, and the plethora of fish in it make it a pleasant experience all together. At the end of the river, there’s a small waterfall, and a track where you can hike up to the top to get a view of the area.
• Quad the Garden Route – There are many quad places all over the Garden Route and some offer some really cool advenures, you can go and try your skills with a difficult course, or simply head on a historical journey. Either way it’s good fun, and much more peaceful than jumping off a bridge.
• Sandboarding Jeffrey’s Bay – While no Dune 7 – sandboarding in Jeffrey’s bay is simply fun.

That said, we were all in our 20’s and without children when we went this November but that’s not to say the Garden Route doesn’t offer family friendly or less adrenalin filled holidays. The pure natural beauty of the area is enough to get anyone out there, the food is delicious, and the atmosphere is calm and relaxed, there are bird and animal sanctuaries all over the place, and even elephant riding at a conservatory. The towns that line the coast are some of the safest in the country, and walking around at night is perfectly fine, which residents of Joburg, or CT will attest is not always the case in their neck of the woods. I’d say that it’s really a microcosm of the country, and all the good that it offers.

In all we stayed there for five days and in the end it just wasn’t enough, none of us wanted to leave, and we know we missed a lot. So if you know of anything not mentioned here that is just brill, do mention it.