South Africa Self Drive Safari | Africa Travel Newsletter

by Alison Westwood, 1 August 2006

"I want you to do a sort of Thelma and Louise," our MD told me. "It'll be the two of you on a road trip. We'll get you a car. You just have to drive up the Garden Route, go on safari, and have some adventures."

I wondered whether Joanne had seen Thelma and Louise. I felt sure she didn't intend us to drive the car off a cliff, or expect our adventures to include having our money stolen or being on the run from the police.

No chance of getting lost

Nevertheless, I promised we would do our best and went off to look at a map of our route. My navigational skills usually leave a lot to luck, but the Garden Route is foolproof. You get onto the N2 from Cape Town and keep going for nearly 500 miles until you hit Port Elizabeth.

We drove out of Cape Town on a glorious day of sunshine and horsetail clouds like streamers in the sky. At the top of Sir Lowry's Pass I pulled over and we admired the view of Cape Town and Table Mountain.

I explained to my road trip buddy Kira that we were on a quest for adventure. We both agreed that although this was an excellent opportunity for a cliff dive, we would not drive off the edge of Sir Lowry's Pass. There was still too much to look forward to.

Blue cranes and Jersey cows

Our progress was slow at first. This was not because of the roads (which are excellent) or the traffic (which was light). It was because of me and my camera. Every few kilometers brought some new arrangement of green fields, yellow canola flowers and big skies, and I had to stop the car so I could photograph them.

Fearing that we would never reach Knysna, Kira took the wheel and I contented myself with drive-by shootings of sheep. I also pointed out natural features of interest from our Roadside Guide to the Garden Route. Possibly against her will, Kira learned that the mountains of the Garden Route are geologically related and part of a set of rocks called the Cape Supergroup.

We saw a flock of blue cranes next to a flock of sheep and discovered that the area around Caledon is the best place to see this rare and beautiful bird, which is also the national bird of South Africa. Thanks to our book, we could also distinguish between Jersey and Friesland/Holstein cows with confidence.

The most picturesque place in South Africa

Swellendam gave us our first chance to get lost or to meet a confidence trickster, but we did neither. We did have some yummy home-made soup and a ploughman's lunch and sat in the sunshine outside an ancient and picturesque barn.

Swellendam simply bursts with picturesqueness. According to our book, it is arguably the most picturesque place in South Africa. Named after Hendrik Swellengrebel and his wife Helena den Damme, it's over 250 years old and has historical buildings and countryside charm up to here.

Almost every house is a national monument, as are the old oak trees in Swellengrebel Street. We left before Kira took too many photographs of picturesque watering-can water-features.

Our next stop was Wilderness. Just a short distance from Knysna, Wilderness is a tiny pocket of civilization between a river, a forested mountainside and a long golden beach. Crossing the river as it reaches the beach is an old railway bridge, which is still used by an antique steam locomotive called the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe. We joined a couple of local kids waving at the train as it chuffed by.

Oysters on ice

The final stretch of road into Knysna skirts the huge lagoon, sheltered by two heads. Our guesthouse looked out onto a pink sunset over the lagoon, where the Featherbeds Ferry was trundling home.

Knysna is a good place for eating and drinking, and no visit to Knysna is complete without sampling some of the famous oysters. We phoned a friend and arranged to meet him at the Knysna Oyster Company where we swallowed wild oysters and Cap Classique with gusto.

We left Knysna at least 10 pounds heavier and with wallets quite a bit lighter. We were heading for Plettenberg Bay and I was trying to convince Kira that a walk on Robberg Peninsula was an essential part of our ridiculously rushed itinerary.

I didn't want to go just to walk off the weight, but because I suspect that Robberg might be the most beautiful place on earth. It's one of those rare places that overwhelms you no matter how often you return. Go, and you could fall in love with a rocky mistress bedecked with milkwood forests and fringed with lonely white beaches and barking seals.

At home with the monkeys

Two hours later, we had the start of our holiday suntans, sand in our shoes, and enormous appetites. After crusty sandwiches and baked cheesecake in Plettenberg Bay we went to meet the monkeys.

Monkeyland and Birds of Eden are two very large forested enclosures about 20 minutes past Plettenberg Bay where you can have the rather upside down experience of being in the cage with the exhibits.

At Monkeyland there are primates from all over the world, including ring-tailed lemurs from Madagascar, chattering Capuchin Monkeys from South America and a speedy but lonely Gibbon from Thailand. We wandered through the forest listening to the medley of strange voices and watching monkeys play and eat so close we could hear them chew.

We didn't have nearly enough time to see Birds of Eden properly and had to rush around exclaiming over ibises that must have been painted with pink highlighters, pheasants that strutted proudly and then got coy when we tried to take their photograph, and a cockatiel who looked at us skeptically because he knew our sort.

The forest of secrets

The next morning we had an early start for a walking safari around Buffalo Hills, a private game reserve close to Plettenberg Bay. Zulu, a Xhosa ranger, led us past zebra and bontebok towards the indigenous forest, which has been completely undisturbed by man for the last 35 years.

It's a forest of secrets and silence. Outside it was sunny, but inside the forest the dawn had not arrived. Knysna Loeries scuttled around in the treetops,

venerable vines dangled from yellowwood trees, and I couldn't help wondering if one of the last Knysna elephants might be watching us.

Sailing with the whales

From our walking safari, we went straight on to an ocean safari with Ocean Blue Adventures in Plettenberg Bay. Instead of climbing into a 4x4 to find lions and leopards, we donned lifejackets and climbed into a boat to look for whales and dolphins. Within a few minutes, we were just 50 metres away from a Southern Right Whale as it rested in the shallow waters just off the beach.

As we watched the enormous animal wallow, our guides told us about the breeding cycle of the Southern Right Whale. Long endangered by hunting (they are called Right whales because they were considered the right whales to kill), the Southern Right is making a comeback because their Cape breeding grounds are completely protected.

At one point, there were less than 300 Southern Right Whales left, but today it's estimated that there are at least three or four thousand, and the population is growing at a healthy 7 percent a year. (Bear in mind, though, that before humans went in search of whale oil for their candles and whalebone for their corsets, there were probably more than 100 000 Southern Right Whales.)

We left our first whale to enjoy a peaceful morning and carried on with our ocean safari, scanning the sea for signs of activity. We saw more of the distinctive V-shaped spouts of the Southern Right, but decided to pursue a frisky pod of humpback whales instead.

Our boat bounded over the waves beside them as they breached and lobtailed and slapped their flippers until, with a farewell wave of their tails, they dived deep under water and we returned to land.

From ocean to bush

We got back onto the N2, and drove across the Bloukrans River gorge into the Eastern Cape. We passed the Tsitsikamma forest with its giant yellowwood trees and the Bloukrans and Storms river bridges where people tired of life can bungee the two highest bridge jumps in the world, but we didn't stop until we reached Shamwari, just before Grahamstown.

It's worth mentioning at this point that the Eastern Cape takes an unpredictable approach to weather. When planning your Eastern Cape safari holiday, allow at least two or three nights wherever you stop. This will prevent you behaving as if you are on the run from the law, and ensure that you get what you came for.

Shamwari is known as a very fine game reserve, with excellent animal sightings, but I am unable to verify this because we spent only one night there. I can tell you that the rooms at Riverdene are a fabulous place to spend a rainy Saturday morning.

Hungry lions and one unlucky warthog

Our last stop was Kwandwe, just after Grahamstown. By then, the weather had grown tired of rain and resorted to cold. Fortunately our ranger, Graham, was a consummate story-teller and his tracker, Albert, had eyes like a hawk, so we didn't care about our chilly fingers or runny noses.

Soon we were watching enthralled as a huge lioness and her two very playful cubs lingered over the last of a 700kg eland they had brought down a couple days before. Every so often we could hear the roaring of the cub's father in the distance. Apparently, they had decided not to invite him to the feast and were studiously ignoring his calls.

Later Albert found the big male lion resting on a hillside, and we followed him as he made the rounds of all their favourite places, hoping to find them there.

He had been searching for his family for three days by the time we left, sometimes missing them by just a few hundred metres. He was cold, hungry, and pretty annoyed. I'm still wondering what he'll say when he finds them

The next morning we braved the frost and were rewarded with hot water bottles and, thrillingly, a lion kill. It was the first kill I had ever seen, and it was over so fast that I couldn't quite figure out what had happened.

Neither could the large warthog who was one moment trotting along happily, and the next clubbed by four lions and dragged into a bush. His squeals were slowly suffocated, and the red muzzles of the lions when they emerged from the bush were a gory confirmation of the warthog's doom.

No unhappy ending

We returned the car intact at Port Elizabeth airport that afternoon. We had failed in our mission: we still had most of our money, we had not killed so much as a jaywalking tortoise and, as far as I could tell, we hadn't even managed to get a speeding ticket.

I found I didn't mind too much. After all, we had succeeded in having some rather good adventures and a really enjoyable South Africa safari holiday.