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South Africa: recommended routes

South Africa is enormous in size, varied in landscape and packed full of things you won’t have seen or done before. So the itineraries below are always going to be fairly flexible. Take the general route as a guideline and stop wherever takes your fancy really.

Short term

- Arrive in Cape Town, acclimatise and see the sights - including Table Mountain.

Click here >> for things to see and do in Cape Town
Click here >> for more things to see and do in Cape Town

- Head off on a whistle-stop tour of the Garden Route. First stop could be Hermanus for some whale watching.

Click here >> for a Garden Route website
Click here >> for the Baz Bus
Click here >> for information on Hermanus

- Get on the Garden Route proper - take a look at Mossel Bay

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- Carry on your Garden Route journey. Next stop Knysna? It has got a lagoon after all...

Click here >> for information on Knysna

- Next stop really ought to be Plettenberg Bay - lovely beaches, all kinds of nature stuff and it’s not far from the spectacular coastal scenery of the Tsitsikamma National Park and the Bloukrans Bungi.

Click here >> for Plettenberg Bay
Click here >> for the Bloukrans Bungi
Click here >> for the Tsitsikamma National Park

- The end of your Garden Route tour will probably be Port Elizabeth - or ‘The Friendly City’ as it likes to be known.

Click here >> for Port Elizabeth’s friendly website

- Spend the long hours on the bus to Jo’burg International Airport wishing you’d allowed yourself more time in South Africa.

Medium Term

- Start off in Jo’burg this time. Don’t hang about too long, head for Nelspruit, Kruger National Park and all the beasties it contains.

Click here >> for Johannesburg
Click here >> for Kruger NP 
Click here >> for Nelspruit

- Go to the mountainous country-within-a-country that is Swaziland - the Switzerland of Africa.

Click here >> for the website

- Zululand - our suggestion would be to stay in St Lucia, check out the wetlands, enjoy a braai (that’s a barbecue to you and I) on Mission Rock and immerse yourself in a bit of Zulu culture.

Click here >> for the website

- Head off to Durban once you’ve had enough of that

Click here >> for things you can do in Durban for free

- Go to the Transkei - might we be so bold as to recommend the Coffee Shack as a place to stay? From here you can experience some Xhosa culture, chill out on pristine beaches etc

Click here >> for the Coffee Shack

- Go to Port Elizabeth and do the short term itinerary in reverse, ignoring the final point of course.

Long Term

All of the above, taking a bit more time about it this time - other things you might like to include are:

- Cage diving with Great White Sharks

Click here >> for the website

- An ostrich farm - well, why not?

Click here >> for ostrich options
Click here >> for other ostrich options

- A theme park - not a traditional African thing, but it’s fun anyway.

Click here >> for the website 

- Monkey Land - better than Monkey World in the UK apparently, but it doesn’t have the donkey. It’s quoted as "currently the top eco-tourism attraction on the Garden Route."

Click here >> for the website

- Kite Surfing - popular around Cape Town

Click here >> for the website

- Addo Elephant Park - The Addo Elephant National Park was established in 1931 to protect the last 11 wild elephants from extermination. Today the park offers excellent viewing of black rhino, Cape buffalo leopard, and over 350 elephants

Click here >> for the website