The Garden Route – Cape Town Road Trip

For the past 3 years, my fiancée kept on telling me how amazing South Africa is. We’ve had an amazing road trip in western Canada together, spent a month jumping into Yucatan cenotes, and worked from the beaches of Thailand like proper remote employees, so I felt a little bit insulted. While we were enjoying these amazing places, she extolled the virtues of a city that has both the ocean and mountains, and teased me with waterfalls, wineyards and the perfect steak.

Fortunately, the opportunity has come to say “I call”.

Maria’s team had to gather in April for some on-site R&R in Cape Town. This is a traditional practice for remote employees. Since you see your coworkers only on Slack or Zoom calls – its good to remind yourself that these are real human beings that like to eat and have fun. And that was the plan for that trip – I would sit tight and work from fabulous Cape Town coffee shops and Maria would eat, drink and have fun with her coworkers.

Afterwards, we would go for a 6-day road trip.

Garden Route

We picked an 800 km long route on the coast, west of Cape Town. Known as the “Garden Route”, it is home to multiple national parks and charming coastal cities. This is where Atlantic and Indian oceans meet and nature decides to show us the good stuff.

1 Addo Elephant Park

Addo Elephant Park has “Elephant” in the name. Nuff said. These gracious creatures are impressive not only in size – you should read more on Maria’s blog.

This is the furthest point of our trip, so we decided to hit it first and to do most of the driving up front. Cape Town is 830 km from Addo, so we spent 2 days on the road, arriving at about 1 PM.

Our second night would be in the park itself. We scored a lovely “Cottage” on the park premises, which would allow us to take advantage of early morning animal spotting. The cottages are available on SAN parks website.

Addo Main Camp is located close to a waterhole, which you can observe from an underground hide. And… oh boy! That came in handy when a Lion (I had no intention of seeing a lion, but he showed up regardless) killed a Kudu antelope right next to the hide. We could all see him resting for a while before he dragged the prey away from our prying eyes.

I managed to record a video before he vanished:

The park itself is a DIY safari. You take your car and drive around, spotting different animals and enjoying life. Safari was #128 on my personal bucketlist and I can proudly cross it off having seen:

• Wild Pig AKA Pumba
• Kudu
• Elephant
• Zebra
• Ostrich
• Buffalo
• Antelope
• Different birds
• Hiena
• Jackal
• Dung beetle. Lots of them! The biggest challenge in the park was not to crush them when they were crossing the road. I guess this is how elephants feel about us humans.
• And the aforementioned Lion

2 Storms River Mouth / Tsitsikamma

My sneaky fiancée lured me to this country promising waterfalls. I am kind of a Waterfall afficionado junkie, so visiting Storms River was a must.

Unfortunately, on the day both the weather turned bad and I started having ankle problems, so we gave up on waterfall hike (3-4 hrs) :(. We will have to do it another time.

3 Nature’s Valley

Even though you can sleep in the park itself (Storms River has cottages), we spent 2 nights in the nearby town called Nature’s Valley. The Otter Trail connects it to Storms River and apparently we are the only 2 people in the world that have not heard about The Otter Trail. Everything in Nature’s Valley is named after an Otter, and I mean EVERYTHING. We stayed at a placed called Kamma Otter and I counted at least 5 other B&Bs named after an Otter (and this city has only 50 houses). If you see how many times I used the word “Otter” in the last paragraph, you’ll start to get a feel of Nature’s Valley.

Believe it or not, an Otter-based naming scheme is not the only charming thing about the lovely town. It is located between the lagoon and the ocean, has 1 restaurant, 1 shop and a very tight-knit community of bird lovers.

I think they throw you out if you don’t love birds.

4 Knysna

Do you see the white building just on the edge of the left “head”? This is Easthead Cafe. We had breakfast there. You should too.

5 Map of Africa paragliding spot

On the way back to Cape Town, we decided to check out the spot called “Map of Africa”. It’s a piece of land shaped like an African continent, surrounded by river.

My fiancée had dreamt of paragliding for few years now (this trip is all about the stuff she wants to do, isn’t it?). Every time we noticed people in the air, she would point them out and make sure I knew she is up for it 🙂

And there they were, running from the cliff and soaring in the air!

So how does this work?

1. You drive to the “Map of Africa” viewpoint, expecting to see something vaguely resembling African continent,
2. A random guy walks up to you, offering to strap you onto a contraption that puts you a hundred meters in the air. No reservation was necessary,
3. Naturally, you say yes to the random dude,
4. You pay 800 ZAR per person,
5. This is a tandem flight so you are actually tied to an instructor who hopefully knows what he is doing,
6. You run awkwardly a few steps,
7. You start soaring like a sack of potatoes,
8. You fly for about 15-20 minutes having the best time ever,
9. If the instructor catches a wind current, you land where you started, with smooth grass and sheep to soften your fall. If not, he will drop you in the ocean land on the beach and they’ll pick you up in a car.

6 Kaaimans Bridge

While paragliding, you can get a glimpse of this decommissioned railway bridge. If you are not paragliding, you can stop at “The Dolphins Viewpoint” to have a look:

7 The Oude Post

This is a gas station and a sandwich shop. Which has Mini Goats, a turtle and the most delicious sandwiches imaginable. They serve traditional Roosterkoeken – a sandwich/pastry that is baked on the barbecue during traditional Braai.

Braai is to South Africa what Barbecue is to Texas. A human right.

8 Hermanus

Our trip had an end right on the airport, where we would return the car. But since we had extra few hours, we stopped in Hermanus.

Hermanus is a coastal city that is famous for one thing: Whales.

It is one of the best cities in the world for Whale Watching. The cliff offers great views on the ocean and these big sea mammals come close by so you can watch them from the shore.

The season is from July till November, so a whale watching trip in April was a bit of a gamble, but it paid of tremendously! A whale was doing whale things in the bay and standing on Gearings Point, we could see the back and tail popping up from the water here and there.

I tried to take drone photos, but birds attacked my drone, so I had to count on the return-to-home feature.

Map

Here are all these spots – and more on the map:

I have to admit that now I understand why my fiancée wanted to share immense beauty of South Africa with me. I will definitely come back here. I the meantime – you can check out Job’s post with much better photos. Or subscribe to my newsletter!