Whale & Garden Route Travel Information

From Cape Town along the coast to the Tsitsikamma Forest, this 600-kilometre stretch of small towns, wineries, farms and sea villages has been a traveller's joy for more than a century. Take your time, soak in the scenery, stay over in a guesthouse, enjoy the cuisine and let South African hospitality take over. The little fishing village of Hermanus, just an hour from Cape Town, offers great land-based whale watching. Just a short drive on from Hermanus, is another fishing village called, Gansbaai, which is best known for boat trips available to get hair-raisingly close to the Great White Sharks that inhabit the area just off the coast, commonly known as Shark Alley!

Taking a trip inland from Cape Town, instead of along the coast, will bring you along the famous Route 62, which is more of a country route, stretching all the way to Oudtshoorn, the Ostrich capital of South Africa, and home to the Cango Caves, rated as one of the best limestone caves in the world.
The Garden Route runs along the coast from about Mossel Bay all the way to around Port Elizabeth. This narrow coastal area is often very forested, is mostly boarded by lagoons, which run behind a barrier if sand dunes and superb beaches. Inland, their boundaries are the majestic Outeniqua and Tsitsikamma mountain ranges. The coastal villages most note-worthly of making a stop at are Knysna and Plettenberg Bay.