The Garden Route (Western & Eastern Cape)
Running east from Cape Town along the southern coast, the Garden Route is the most loved self-drive in South Africa, and for good reason. The road threads a green ribbon of country between the mountains and the sea, linking lagoons and river mouths, pockets of ancient indigenous forest and long golden beaches, with a small town or a viewpoint waiting around almost every bend. It is the kind of drive where the journey really is the point, and where you will want to keep pulling over to take it all in.
The heart of it is Knysna, set on a wide lagoon that opens to the ocean through two great sandstone cliffs known as the Heads. From here the route runs on through the towering forest and fern-lined gorges of Tsitsikamma, where the Storms River meets the sea beneath a swaying suspension bridge, and on to the wide bays and warm beaches of Plettenberg Bay. Wilderness, with its lakes and birdlife, marks the western end, and the elephants of Addo lie just beyond the eastern one.
What makes the Garden Route special is how easily the gentle and the wild sit side by side. You can spend a morning kayaking a still lagoon or wandering a forest trail, then an afternoon watching for whales and dolphins offshore or stepping off a bungee platform if the mood takes you. Between June and November the southern right whales come close in to calve, and the coast becomes one of the best places on earth to watch them. We map the route, choose where you linger and where you simply drive, and build in the stops that turn a pretty road into a trip you remember.
