Experience

The Garden Route

The coast road east of the Cape: Knysna's lagoon between two headlands, Tsitsikamma's suspension bridge over a river mouth, the Karoo's caves and ostrich farms inland, and a different bed most nights.

At a glanceOn land

How longSeveral daysSeveral days, and it suffers if you cut it short

How hardModerateA lot of driving, with short walks and one long bridge

SeasonYear-roundGreen year-round; summer is warm, winter is clear and quiet

The Garden Route is the stretch of coast running east from the Cape where the mountains come down close to the sea and the gap between them fills with indigenous forest, lagoons and river mouths. It is a drive, and the whole point of it is that the drive is the holiday rather than the transfer.

Knysna sits on a lagoon that meets the sea through a narrow gap between two sandstone cliffs, and the gap is the town’s whole geography. Boats go out to the reserve on the far shore for lunch, oysters come out of the water in front of you, and there is a viewpoint on the eastern head where you stand above the channel and watch the swell come through it.

Tsitsikamma is the best of the forest. The Storms River comes out of a gorge into the sea and a footbridge crosses the mouth of it, suspended, moving slightly, with the water going dark green underneath and the swell pushing up the gorge from behind you. There are boardwalk trails through the trees either side and it is one of the few places where a short walk delivers something enormous.

Inland the register changes completely. Over the pass into the Klein Karoo the country goes dry, wide and brown, and Oudtshoorn sits in it with the ostrich farms that built the town’s Victorian houses on feathers. Nearby the Cango Caves run back into the mountain in a series of lit chambers. The standard tour is a walk, and the adventure version involves places a broad-shouldered adult should think about carefully.

Beyond that the road carries on through Plettenberg Bay and the beaches at Wilderness towards Gqeberha, Port Elizabeth on older maps, which is where most people fly out. Do it west to east after Cape Town and the Winelands, take Hermanus on the coast road at the start, and give it more nights than the map suggests it needs.

Good to know

Three bases beats six. Packing every morning is what makes a driving holiday feel like work.
Fuel is cash-or-card at an attended pump and there are long empty stretches. Fill up before you need to.
The sea here is the cold one. Swimming is bracing rather than tropical, whatever the sun is doing.
Cave tours are graded and the adventure route is genuinely tight. Choose honestly.
Adventure activities set their own age and weight limits, and we confirm them before anything is booked.
Fly out of the eastern end. Driving the route twice is the commonest planning mistake on this trip.

Driving times and route conditions, park and reserve entry, ferry and boat schedules on the lagoon, cave tour times and grades, adventure-activity age and weight limits and vehicle hire terms are set locally and change. We confirm what applies to your dates in writing before you pay anything.

Forest on one side, cold Indian Ocean on the other, and a road that keeps finding new ways to hand you both at once.

Where to do it

Where we arrange the garden route

These itineraries already include it. Any of them can be rebuilt around your dates.

South Africa

The Blyde River Canyon on the Panorama Route, its dam winding between flat-topped sandstone peaks

A World in One Country

Thirteen nights from Johannesburg to Cape Town. The Panorama Route, Kruger, eSwatini, Zululand, the Garden Route and Hermanus, finishing under Table Mountain.

13 nightsPrice on request

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A steep street of brightly painted houses in the Bo-Kaap, Cape Town

Cape Town & the Garden Route

Seven nights along the Garden Route. Gqeberha, Knysna's lagoon, Oudtshoorn's caves, the Franschhoek wine valley, and Cape Town with Table Mountain and the penguins.

7 nightsPrice on request

View itinerary

Or browse every itinerary andthe rest of the experiences.

Questions we are actually asked

How many days does it need?

More than people give it. Done as a rush between two flights it is a road with trees beside it; given several nights and two or three bases it becomes the best part of a South African trip. Tell us how long you have and we will say honestly whether it fits.

Self-drive or driver?

Self-drive is genuinely pleasant here, with good road, clear signs and right-hand drive as at home, and it is the way most people do it. A driver-guide is the better answer if you would rather look out of the window, or if the group is large enough for a vehicle.

Which way round?

West to east, starting from Cape Town, so the sea is on your right and the light is with you in the afternoons. Fly home from Gqeberha at the far end, the city most maps and most airlines still label Port Elizabeth, rather than driving the whole thing back. We build that into the ticketing.

Is there wildlife on it?

Not the Kruger's, and it is better not to arrive expecting it. There are elephant and big cat sanctuaries, a small Big Five reserve at the eastern end, whales offshore in season and dolphins fairly reliably. The route's subject is landscape rather than game.

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Where to go next

Each of these answers one of the questions this page opens.