Cape Town → Garden Route → Port Elizabeth
Here are the 35 stories you’ll meet on this journey. The history, culture and nature commentary narrated by the GPS audio guide can be read here in advance.
Cape Town
Sarah Baartman — the Slave Lodge
The building you’re passing now is a museum called the Slave Lodge today, but it was originally the quarters where enslaved people lived. Inside is the story of a woman named Sarah Baartman — a story that’s hard to forget once you’ve heard it. Sarah was a Khoikhoi woman born near the Gamtoos River in the Eastern Cape. While she was working as a servant in Cape Town, an Englishman and a Cape Town merchant approached her in 1810, luring her with the promise that she could make a lot of money in London. So she crossed the Atlantic and was put on display on London’s Piccadilly under the name ‘the Hottentot Venus’. Her body shape, which looked unfamiliar to Europeans of the time, was turned into a spectacle. British abolitionists took her case to court to try to free her, but — very likely under pressure — she told the court she had come of her own free will, and so she was never released. In 1814 she was sold to France, where she was exhibited in a similar way in Paris and even became a subject of study for Georges Cuvier, the most celebrated naturalist of the day. Then in 1815, at only about twenty-five, she died in Paris — and Cuvier dissected her body and preserved her brain and genitals as specimens. Those specimens stayed on display at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris until 1974, almost 160 years after her death. She was finally brought home and buried in 2002, after Nelson Mandela’s government formally asked the French government to return her. And, strikingly, the day of her homecoming ceremony fell on South Africa’s Women’s Day — a coincidence that stays with you once you know it.
Camissa — the hidden river beneath the city
Picture this for a moment as you drive. Right now, beneath this city, a river called ‘Camissa’ is flowing. Cape Town wasn’t built here because of the stunning view of Table Mountain. The real reason was water. Fresh spring water ran down from the mountain, and the Khoikhoi called these streams ‘sweet water’ — Camissa. In 1652, when the Dutch East India Company was looking for a place to build a supply station for ships bound for Asia, it chose this spot precisely because of this water. And amazingly, more than 370 years later, the river hasn’t disappeared. It still flows through underground channels beneath the city — near Heritage Square you can even hear the water if you listen closely to the pavement. There are even walking tours that follow the river through Victorian-era tunnels. Beneath the forest of glittering buildings, the old river that gave birth to this city is still quietly flowing — the more you think about it, the more remarkable it is, isn’t it?
Van Riebeeck’s almond hedge — Kirstenbosch
Deep inside Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden you’ll come across what looks like an ordinary hedge of trees. But this hedge hides a story more than 360 years old. In 1660, Jan van Riebeeck, the first commander of the Cape settlement, planted a dense line of wild almond trees — the bitter kind — along the settlement’s boundary, saying it would stop Khoikhoi raids and cattle theft. It looked like a defensive hedge, but in reality it was the first policy of separation, meant to push the Khoikhoi outside the colony’s land. Remarkably, some of these trees have survived to this day — more than 360 years — and still stand inside Kirstenbosch. They’re preserved as South Africa’s oldest ‘living monument’. When you stroll through this beautiful garden and suddenly come across these old, gnarled trunks, knowing that they mark the very first scene of this country’s history of racial separation may make the view look a little different.
The Castle of Good Hope — a false surrender and the Grey Lady
That star-shaped fortress, the Castle of Good Hope, is the oldest surviving building in South Africa. The Dutch East India Company built it over 13 years, from 1666 to 1679. Beneath the fort there was once a dungeon where prisoners were held, and legend has it that a secret passage led from here to the harbour — perhaps used for smuggling or secret escapes. But the fort’s most famous story is something else: the ghost of the ‘Grey Lady’. Some say she was a woman executed in the dungeon; others say she was the mistress of a 19th-century commander. The interesting thing is that it doesn’t end as an old tale — there are records of night guards reporting sightings of her to this day. Inside this fortress, more than 350 years old, someone may be about to encounter the Grey Lady at this very moment.
The 1901 plague and Ndabeni
When people think of racial segregation in South Africa — apartheid — they usually think of 1948. But attempts to push people out of the city by race began much earlier. In 1901, bubonic plague broke out in Cape Town’s harbour. The real cause, as it later turned out, was rats that arrived on cargo ships — yet the authorities wrongly blamed Black dock workers as the source of infection. Using this as a pretext, they forcibly moved all the Black residents living in town to a new settlement called ‘Ndabeni’, near Maitland. This was the first case of the township segregation policy that would continue for decades. Apartheid officially began in 1948, so this happened a full 47 years earlier. A misunderstanding caused by rats brought this city’s history of racial separation forward by almost half a century.
District Six — demolished, and never rebuilt
That wide empty lot you can see out the window may look like land where construction simply stopped, but this was once Cape Town’s liveliest neighbourhood. It was called District Six — the most diverse place in the city, where Black, Coloured, Indian and Jewish residents all lived side by side. But in 1966 the government declared this land a ‘whites-only area’. Over the next 16 years, until 1982, some 60,000 residents were forcibly removed to the Cape Flats on the city’s outskirts, and every one of their homes and buildings was demolished. Here’s the twist: the forced removals drew such strong international condemnation that even the government didn’t dare announce the white housing it had planned for the empty land. So for decades the land has remained mostly empty. The bare landscape we’re looking at is itself a scar of that violence — and, at the same time, proof that the violence never fully succeeded. Today the District Six Museum keeps the story of that neighbourhood alive.
The convict ship ‘Neptune’ affair
In 1849, the British Empire planned to use the Cape Colony as a penal colony, just as it had done with Australia. So it sent convicts to Table Bay aboard the convict ship ‘Neptune’. But the plan ran into unexpected resistance from the people of Cape Town. Merchants refused as one to supply the ship, and workers blocked the convicts from even coming ashore. For five whole months, the Neptune sat stuck in the harbour, unable to unload. In the end the British government gave in, and the convicts on board were sent on to Australia. Historians regard this as the first mass civil resistance in the city’s history — the Empire’s plan was defeated without a single shot fired, simply by refusing to cooperate.
The Noon Gun on Signal Hill
Every day at noon, a single cannon shot rings out from this hill. It startles people hearing it for the first time, but this cannon isn’t a show for tourists. When it was first installed in 1806, it had just one purpose: to let every ship anchored in the harbour set its navigation clock precisely. Today we have GPS and smartphones, but back then there was nothing of the sort. So for the whole city and every ship in port, the sound of this cannon was the official time. And amazingly, the tradition has continued for more than 200 years without missing a single day. Even now, when noon comes, the cannon will fire from that hill without fail. One of the world’s oldest time-signal traditions is carrying on right before our eyes.
Briefing before the Garden Route
Garden Route: know this and you’ll be fineBriefing before you set off
The Garden Route you’re about to drive is completely different from Route 1’s remote Namibia–Botswana stretches. Let’s start with the good news — this entire route is malaria-free. No need to pack malaria tablets. The roads are tarred all the way, so you can drive with peace of mind even without four-wheel drive. There’s only one toll plaza, on the Tsitsikamma section, and most rental cars have an e-tag that’s billed automatically, so you don’t need to prepare cash. A few things to arrange in advance, though: campsites at Wilderness, Tsitsikamma and Addo national parks often sell out months ahead in peak season — December to January and July to August. We recommend booking in advance on the official SANParks website. And whale watching in Hermanus is best from June to December, so planning your trip around that period will make it far more rewarding. Right — shall we sit back and enjoy the Garden Route?
Hermanus
The only job of its kind in the world — the whale crier
Somewhere along this clifftop path you’re walking, you might hear a horn made of dried kelp — seaweed. Blowing it is the ‘whale crier’, holder of a job that’s practically unique in the world. With the horn and a signboard, the whale crier tells people in which bay whales can be seen. The tradition has continued since the 1990s, and the sound of that kelp horn still rings out somewhere in the town every day. Nowhere else in the world will you find someone with this job — only in Hermanus.
The farmer who took away the poetic name ‘Heaven and Earth’
This town wasn’t originally called ‘Hermanus’. The valley was once known by the poetic name ‘Hemel-en-Aarde’ — ‘Heaven and Earth’. But in the 1850s, the name of Hermanus Pieters, an ordinary teacher who grazed his cattle here, was registered as the official postal address, and the town’s name changed entirely. The original poetic name now survives only as the name of the wine valley behind the town. The name we use today actually began as something close to a postal administrative accident.
Mossel Bay
A letter in an old shoe — the world’s oldest ‘post box’
This tree’s story began in 1500, when a Portuguese captain hung a letter inside an old shoe on it. The captain was Pedro de Ataíde, and a year later, in 1501, the captain of another fleet, João da Nova, happened to find the shoe and delivered the letter back home to Portugal. In an age with no post offices or post boxes, one tree actually served as a post box left to chance. Once the story spread, passing sailors began exchanging letters the same way, and the tree is still known as the ‘Post Office Tree’, one of South Africa’s oldest national monuments. Even today, postcards sent from here receive a special postmark commemorating that history.
164,000 years ago — the cave where ‘modern human thinking’ began
In the coastal caves we’re passing now, evidence was found that some 164,000 years ago humans first used pigment (ochre) for colouring, used fire to heat stone so it could be worked more finely, and systematically gathered shellfish to eat. It’s considered one of the oldest known pieces of evidence of human symbolic thinking and complex behaviour. Some scholars even suggest that during the Ice Age, the rich shellfish and food on this coast allowed some of our ancestors to escape extinction and survive. Perhaps this was humanity’s last refuge through the Ice Age.
From hunting ground to viewing spot — Seal Island
The small island ahead is Seal Island. In the 19th century it was a hunting ground for seal skins and oil. Uncontrolled hunting once reduced their numbers drastically, but after it was declared a protected area in the 20th century, the seals made a comeback. Today, instead of hunting, it’s an eco-tourism spot where you take a boat to watch the seals up close. The same island has turned completely from an object of exploitation into an object of protection.
Wilderness
An African continent drawn by a river bend — a map made by chance
Look closely at the bend in the river below — doesn’t it look exactly like the shape of the African continent? It’s the Serpentine River winding through the wetlands, and nobody designed it — it’s a pure coincidence of natural erosion and deposition by the river. But the coincidence is so precise that the spot has even been named the ‘Map of Africa’.
The vanished train on the cliffs — once the world’s most beautiful railway
That broken bridge you can see was once part of a railway along which steam trains ran on the cliffs right beside the Indian Ocean. Crossing the Kaaimans River gorge next to Wilderness, this old line — with the ocean right alongside as it followed the coastal cliffs — was once counted among the most beautiful rail journeys in the world. But a great flood in 2006 badly damaged the bridge and track, and services stopped for good. Now only the remains of the broken bridge are left, so quiet it’s hard to believe trains once ran here.
George
A forest town named after a king who never visited
The name of this town, George, comes from King George III of England. It was founded in 1811 by the British governor of the Cape, who named it after the king of the day — yet George III never visited the town, and never set foot on the African continent in his life. The town grew through the 19th-century timber industry, bordered by dense yellowwood forests, and interestingly George Rex — the ‘King of Knysna’ who pioneered Knysna around the same time — was also closely tied to the timber industry here. The name came from a king, but the town was really built by the forest and the people who felled it.
Knysna
“I am the king’s hidden son” — the self-made legend of Knysna’s founder
George Rex, the man who founded this town, never bothered to deny the rumour that he was a secret son of King George III of England. Historians consider it baseless, though some say he spread the rumour himself or enjoyed it. In reality he wasn’t royalty but a businessman from a family of lawyers — yet thanks to the rumour he earned the nickname ‘King of Knysna’, as if a royal ruled the town, and he built the town up. Regardless of his true background, a single rumour became part of the town’s identity.
The loneliest elephant in the world
The elephants that lived in this forest we’re passing through were once a large herd, but hunting and logging caused their numbers to plummet. In the 2000s, camera-trap tracking suggested that for a while only one old female elephant remained in the forest, and she became known as ‘the loneliest elephant in the world’. But in 2019 a dung DNA survey found more individuals than expected, surprising scientists. The exact number remains a mystery to this day.
Featherbed Nature Reserve
The cliffs that survived because there was no bridge
The Knysna Heads are two cliffs that flank the mouth of the lagoon, and although the one you’re standing on and the head opposite share equally stunning views, their fates are completely different. The eastern head, connected by road, was developed with houses and viewpoints, but this western head, reachable only by ferry, escaped development precisely because it was hard to get to — and has kept its native fynbos ecosystem almost untouched. The lack of a single bridge ended up preserving this whole cliff in its natural state.
Plettenberg Bay
The hotel where you now watch whales once stood where whales were killed
This hotel is the Beacon Island, one of the most famous hotels in Plett. But a century ago it was a whaling station. In the early 20th century, Norwegian whalers ran a whale-oil processing station on this spot — where caught whales were cut up and their oil rendered. Now it’s a place people come to on purpose to see living whales. The same spot has put whales at its heart for completely opposite reasons.
Robberg Nature Reserve
Where humans first began eating from the sea, 120,000 years ago
In caves on this peninsula, traces of human habitation from about 120,000 years ago have been found. What matters isn’t just that it’s an old dwelling — it’s that large amounts of shells and fish bones were found together. This is considered one of the oldest pieces of evidence that humans began to use coastal resources as a systematic food source. The act of ‘eating seafood’ that we take for granted actually began in a cave beneath these cliffs.
A name meaning ‘seal mountain’
‘Robberg’ means ‘seal mountain’ in Afrikaans. It was named for the Cape fur seal colony that actually lives on the rocks below the cliffs — the name itself captures the identity of this place.
Tsitsikamma
River water as dark as black tea — not pollution, but nature’s colour
Judging by its colour, the river water you see now looks polluted, doesn’t it? It’s a dark reddish brown like strong black tea, and first-time visitors often mistake it for pollution. In fact it’s a natural phenomenon caused by tannins leaching from the surrounding fynbos plants, especially shrubs rich in these compounds. Clean but dark-looking — it’s a common feature of the rivers in this region.
The last giant that survived the loggers
This giant tree, true to its name ‘Big Tree’, has lived for 800 to 1,000 years. Most of the yellowwood forests around Tsitsikamma were cut down for shipbuilding and construction timber in the 19th and 20th centuries, although once the whole area was full of giants like this. After nearly all of them were felled for timber, this tree remains as almost the only survivor that remembers that era.
The trail that takes a year to book
The Otter Trail, established in 1968, is South Africa’s first official hiking trail. It’s so popular, and the number of hikers allowed at once so small, that in peak season bookings commonly fill up a year in advance. The trailhead we pass without a second thought is actually a spot hikers from all over the world wait a year to stand on.
Storms River
A town that cut down the forest becomes a town that flies over it and protects it
The town we’re passing, Storms River, was originally built for forestry workers who felled giant yellowwoods. But in 2001 its people started the opposite kind of business. They created Africa’s first zipline canopy tour — and instead of cutting down trees, began earning a living by flying between them. Part of the tour revenue still goes to a forest conservation fund. In a single century, the town’s very reason for existing was turned on its head.
Bloukrans Bridge
A highway bridge sets a world record
This bridge you’re crossing was originally just a highway bridge — an ordinary piece of infrastructure built in 1983 to carry the N2 across the gorge. But when a bungee-jumping business started here in 1990, its 216-metre drop from the bridge deck to the gorge floor was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s highest commercial bungee jump. A bridge built for cars to drive across has become a landmark people come to on purpose to jump off.
Tsitsikamma Toll Plaza
The only toll plaza on this routePractical info
This toll plaza is the only main toll you’ll pass on the 800-kilometre stretch from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. The fee for a regular car is about 73 rand, but most rental cars have an e-tag that’s billed automatically, so you don’t need to pay cash. It’s settled when you return the car, so just drive through with ease.
Jeffreys Bay
The shark fight the whole world watched live
The wave you’re looking at is Supertubes. In July 2015, during the World Surf League final held right here, Australian champion surfer Mick Fanning was suddenly attacked by a shark while waiting for a wave. It was being broadcast live around the world, so millions of people witnessed that tense moment in real time. Fanning pushed the shark away with his own fists and swam to the rescue boat, escaping unharmed — and the footage went on to become one of the most famous shark encounters ever filmed.
‘Like flying through a tube’ — the name says it all
Surfers who came here in the 1960s and ’70s named the wave after exactly how it felt to ride down the long cylindrical tunnel formed as the wave breaks: ‘Supertubes’. Few waves in the surfing world have a nickname so intuitive and so accurate.
Addo Elephant National Park
From just 11 to 600 — the story of the elephants that survived a massacre
This park’s elephants started with just 11 animals in 1931. Between 1919 and 1920, a single hunter hired by the government shot more than 100 elephants in this area, on the grounds that they were raiding farmland. The park was created in 1931 precisely to protect those last survivors, and some 90 years later their descendants number more than 600. But perhaps because of the memory of that terrible hunt, it’s said that Addo’s elephants are more sensitive and skittish around vehicles and people than elephants elsewhere.
A fence made of lift cables that even elephants can’t break
This fence looks ordinary, but it’s actually a special fence that even elephants can’t break through. Elephants are so strong that they easily smashed ordinary wire fences and escaped. In 1954, park warden Graham Armstrong devised a special fence made from recycled old lift (elevator) cables — and it proved so remarkably effective that today, as the ‘Addo fence’, it’s used almost as a standard in elephant reserves around the world. An invention born of necessity became a global standard.
Port Elizabeth
“Never build anything on this spot” — one man’s lasting proof of love
This pyramid was built by a governor for his wife, who died young. In the 1820s, Sir Rufane Donkin, acting governor of the Cape, named this city after his wife Elizabeth, who had died of fever in India. He built a pyramid-shaped memorial on a hill overlooking the harbour, and had an inscription carved asking that no building should ever block the view from this spot. Almost 200 years later the promise is still kept, and the harbour view from the pyramid is just as it was then.
67 artworks, 67 years of struggle — a tribute that became the whole city
For the 2010 World Cup, the city installed 67 public artworks around the centre to honour the 67 years Nelson Mandela devoted to the struggle — from his work as a lawyer to his term as president. It’s simply called ‘Route 67’. Just walking this city means following Mandela’s life. This is the end of our Garden Route journey — you’ve driven 800 kilometres with us.
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