Your Garden Route ride opens with a full day in Cape Town, a city that rarely gives you a dull hour. From Table Mountain the road runs south to Cape Agulhas, the southern tip of Africa. You pass through Betty’s Bay on the way, where the colony at Stony Point Penguin Sanctuary is worth the stop, and reach Hermanus, arguably the best place in the country to watch whales from dry land.
Turning east along the Cape south coast, you pick up the forests and mountains of the Garden Route. A night in Knysna and a stop on the Tsitsikamma shoreline lead to Port Elizabeth, the largest city in the Eastern Cape and one of South Africa’s major ports. Worth pulling over on the way: the Bloukrans Bridge, where a 216 metre drop makes the world’s highest commercial bungee jump.
A full day of game viewing follows in Addo Elephant National Park, picnic included, with a real chance of the Big Five: lion, elephant, rhino, leopard and buffalo.
From there the road climbs inland to Oudtshoorn, capital of the Little Karoo and of the world’s ostrich trade. You meet the birds, walk the Cango Caves and ride the Swartberg Pass, one of the great mountain roads of the Cape. Route 62 takes over next, billed as the longest wine route on earth, threading along the northern slopes of the Langeberg to Robertson in the Breede River Valley. Ronnie’s Sex Shop makes an obligatory stop along the way. The name is a joke that got out of hand: what they actually sell is beer.
Few tours string together this many good roads in one loop. Total distance is roughly 2,320 km, averaging about 290 km a day.
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