Garden Route

Knysna Elephant Park

Elephant Sanctuary Plettenberg Bay

Bungee Jumping at Bloukrans Bridge

Bloukrans Bungy is one of the Garden Route’s best-known adventure experiences, operating from the Bloukrans River Bridge on the N2 in the Tsitsikamma. The jump takes place from a platform beneath the bridge, reached via the suspended walkway that carries participants out above the gorge. The bungy itself is 216 metres, and the operator does […]

Witsand Circuit, Robberg

The middle of Robberg’s three circular routes, and the one that shows you the peninsula properly without committing the whole morning. CapeNature gives it as 5.5 kilometres and about two hours. The trail runs along the northern ridge of the peninsula and out onto the wind-shadow of the climbing-falling dune — Witsand, the white sand […]

Point Circuit, Robberg

The full length of the peninsula and back, and the route people mean when they say they have walked Robberg. CapeNature gives it as 9.2 kilometres and about four hours, and describes it as a fairly strenuous walk that is not recommended for young children. The trail heads up the north ridge all the way […]

Gap Circuit, Robberg

The shortest of Robberg’s three circular routes, and the one most visitors have time for. It leaves the car park and heads straight into a mudstone cleft — the Gap itself — a split in the rock that carries evidence of the break-up of Gondwanaland around 120 million years ago. CapeNature gives the walk as […]

Cradock Pass

Cradock Pass is the old way over the Outeniqua mountains, the ox-wagon route that carried everything between George and the interior before the modern passes were cut. It still climbs: 8.4 km graded moderate, at about six hours for the round trip. It starts from the Outeniqua Nature Reserve at Witfontein above George and goes […]

Otter Trail

The Otter is the trail every other South African hike gets measured against. Five days and four nights along the Tsitsikamma coast, starting at Storms River Mouth and finishing at Nature’s Valley, walked in one direction only, sleeping in huts above the sea. It books out a long way ahead and it deserves to. The […]

Blue Duiker Trail

The Blue Duiker is the middle option at Storms River Mouth: longer than the hour-long Loerie, far shorter than the Waterfall Trail, and entirely inside the forest above the camp. It is 3.7 km over about two hours, circular, so you come back to where you parked. It climbs off the camp into Tsitsikamma coastal […]

Bush Pig Trail

Goukamma sits between Sedgefield and Knysna, a stretch of dune, fynbos and forest wrapped around a freshwater lake, and it is quieter than almost anything else on this coast. The Bush Pig is its best short circuit: 6.5 km, two to three hours, up onto a fynbos ridge and back down through milkwood forest. This […]