All who visit the Garden Route fall victim to its seductive
allure.
In a province dominated by a Mediterranean climate and vegetation,
the sheer extravagance of its tropical forests, brilliantly
hued birds, multitudinous exotic plant species, tranquil inland
lakes, densely wooded mountains, pristine beaches and meandering,
reed-banked rivers is overwhelming.
Stretching along the southern Cape coast from Heidelberg in
the west to the Tsitsikamma Forest and Storms River in the east,
the region's entrance to the interior is barred by towering
mountains breached by passes and gorges stirring archetypal
images of Amazonian jungles.
The mystique evoked by the Garden Route's ever-changing landscape
carries on its still, fragrant, sea-scented air a sense of the
spiritual. With so much of the area's beauty unspoilt, visitors
feel they have been set free to play in God's backyard.
A well-developed tourist infrastructure has strung the region's
towns along its coast like a string of pearls. In all of them,
artists, writers, naturalists and nature lovers coexist with
those devoting their time and energies to catering to the whims
and special fancies of the area's year-round visitors.
Replete with legends of hillbillies, the seldom-seen Knysna
elephants, soft mornings drifting in on the music of a woodcutter's
axe, the early sun kissing the face of a perfect wave peeling
off cosy Victoria Bay's secluded point, the entirely appropriate
eccentricity of Noetzie's beach-bound castles and Belvidere's
Norman Church, the Garden Route is a romantic's paradise.
Visiting the worked-out, overgrown goldmines of Millwood, where
prospectors indulged in a 19th century fortune-seeking frenzy,
the graves of early pioneers seem forever fresh. It seems proper
in an area that steals every visitor's heart.
