The Garden Route

23rd November - 1st December

After enjoying a week of enjoying hot showers, ambling through endless food markets and sunbathing on the penguin strewn beaches of Cape Town, we felt it was about time for another holiday. This was a very confusing thing…as we already felt like we were on holiday.

If you’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s movie Inception, you may be able to comprehend this phenomenon; a dream within a dream!

With a tank full of hope and ambition, we set off in our trusty Kia Rio to The Garden Route.

Hermanus

Whilst still in our planning stages, a friend from Clapham mentioned he had a ‘basic little holiday cottage’ just outside Hermanus. We had been offered a ‘basic little holiday cottage’ about 15 years ago for a family holiday in Cornwall. It turned out that the toilet was situated in the middle of the lounge, the walls were made from rotting chip board and on the first night I woke up with a frog on my face! I tentatively asked Andrew for more details.

Hermanus is a little coastal town with many boutique shops, some great restaurants and, if you arrive 2 weeks before we did, the best land-based whale spotting in the world. Our beach house was located just outside the town in a beautiful nature reserve. We were wedged between a lagoon on one side, and the Indian Ocean on the other. We had braais at sunset and woke up to the sight of wild horses on the water’s edge at sunrise. It’s fair to say, my scepticism was happily misplaced.

Top tip: If driving from Cape Town, add 20 minutes to your journey and drive on the R44 through Pringle Bay for the most stunning coastal road.

Mossel Bay/Botlierskop

Our next stop was Mossel Bay – the official start of the Garden Route. We bypassed the town and headed straight to a private game reserve called Botlierskop. 4000 hectares of game park with the Outeniqua Mountains providing a breath-taking backdrop. As a special treat for all our hard driving (!), we went on a horseback safari through the park. We were the only 2 on the ride and felt rather smug as we rode passed white rhino, elands and giraffe. We learnt about the brown colouring of the Cape zebra, how the waterbuck stays afloat thanks to its hollow straw-like hair, and how female giraffes coats fade with age whereas the male patterns get bolder (apparently men get better with age in the animal kingdom too)!

To further reward ourselves for a long hard ride, we visited their spa! This was special. Once again, we had the place to ourselves. Watching elephant roam whilst sat in the jacuzzi pool and enjoying complementary champagne was a moment of opulence that won't be forgotten! Botlierskop was utterly beautiful and a real highlight of the trip for both of us.

We enjoyed fish and chips on the waterfront at Mossel before heading back to our BnB. In the light of day, we went to explore and discovered there really isn’t a lot to Mossel. One South African described it as a ‘place you go to pick up spare car parts’, which says it all!

Top tip: Not that much to Mossel, but Bottlierskop is wonderful.

Knysna

A couple of hours up the road is a little paradise known as Knysna. We stayed on an island called ‘Leisure Isle’. If you imagine Jersey, shrink it down to 100th of it’s size and increase the average age by 10 years you may get some idea. A tiny haven, set inside a sheltered lagoon with a pace of life similar to that of England rugby’s rush defence last week (slow!). Our BnB was run by a guy called Tom. I took an immediate disliking to Tom – He was tall, had great hair, a demeanour so relaxed that coolness seemed to seep from him, and he paddle boarded with his dog every evening - what a douche. His fantastic apartments came with single speed push bikes with baskets mounted on the front (much to Beth’s delight) and kayaks. This was about as far from rugged Africa as you could get. We dropped into the local tennis club, next to one of the 3 bowls greens, who effusively welcomed us, lent us equipment and showed us the honesty box should we want to donate. Knysna has a retirement village for every day of the week and a hospice for each day of the weekend. We had found our retirement plan, and didn’t want to leave. But alas, adventure awaited.

Addo

We woke up at 4:30am and made our way up to the Eastern cape. After 3.5 hours of driving through beautiful forest and near empty roads we arrived at Addo Elephant Park. It’s fair to say, I was pretty excited for this. Addo is the 3rd largest national park in South Africa and backs onto the ocean making it the only place on earth you can encounter the Big 7 (5 on land + the Southern Right Whale and Great White Shark). We entered through the Mathyolweni gate and started our self drive safari. After 30 minutes of driving through scrubby bush land eagerly searching for life I looked around to see Beth eagerly searching the back of her eyelids! After excitedly stopping for every ostrich, warthog and zebra someone gave us a tip off that one of the waterholes was looking good. We were met with the sight of 130 elephants playing, winding each other up and trying to cool off in the heat of the day. We sat for about an hour in awe of these majestic creatures who seemed completely unphased by our presence.

As the sun started to set we drove to our accommodation for the night at Tipi Bushcamp. We were met by Rob, the proprietor of this small game park, who proudly showed us around his site. The next morning we looked out of our glamping tent to see elephants migrating across the adjacent hill. We were free to roam the park and stumbled upon a family giraffe. Seeing these gentle giants up close, on foot and without a guide was a spectacular sight.

Ttitsikamma

On our way back we stopped off at Tsitsikamma national park. Set in beautiful tropical rainforest this felt a bit like Centre Parcs on steroids. We did the gentle 20 min walk to the suspension bridge and had a swim in crystal clear water. The park is big and there is a 5 day otter trail walk where you follow the path of the Cape clawless otters. Tsitsikamma showcased another of South Africa’s amazingly diverse landscapes but we couldn’t stay long as we had places to go…

Top Tip: This is an awesome spot for camping/caravanning and seemed a hit with young families.

Knysna…again!

Having loved it so much, we returned to our little leisure haven. We saw whales frolicking in the sea (through my very long-distance binoculars), brunched to our hearts content and kayaked in the lagoon at sunset. Bliss!

We then headed back to Cape Town via Franschhoek - the 'foodie bit' which Beth will regale you with in the next post!