The garden route is a section of South Africa’s southern Indian Ocean coastline hetween Port Elizabeth – renamed to Gqeberha last week – and Cape Town. It’s not really a garden but it’s a very scenic drive.

Gqeberha is not especially attractive. It has long sandy beaches and a hill with a pyramid built by the city founder and a mosaic showing local animals. From here the route leads to a canyon with many orthogonal rock formations that look almost like walls a series of walls, cut through by the narrow Storms River. A little further down the road is Tsitsikamma Big Tree with a circumference of nine meters. They are very proud of it and have built a long wooden walkway and charge admission, but honestly it’s very underwhelming. I have seen baobabs in Tanzania many times that size, scroll down. The jungle walk was worth it though.

In Plettenberg Bay I could finally take my shoes off and walk in the surf of the Indian Ocean. It’s quite cold but that doesn’t stop the locals. Swimming is not allowed in most other places along South Africa’s coast because of sharks.