Garden Route Kruger Park Safari - 8 Days, Dep Cape Town.

We spend the first four days touring through the famous Garden Route en-route to Port Elizabeth, We fly from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg and spend the next four days touring through the famous Kruger National park.

This tour takes the Garden Route in a more relaxed manner and guests have more time to take in the immense beauty of this region. Running along a scenic stretch of coastline, the Garden Route is an ever changing landscape. Beginning in Cape Town and ending in Port Elizabeth, the Garden Route offers many spectacular sights, from fields of colourful wild flowers to shorelines dotted with beaches and bays.

The Kruger National Park is one of South Africa's main landmarks and offers an exciting wilderness experience. The sight of elephant, lion, rhino, leopard, buffalo, etc. in their natural habitat is always a thrill. The park is the second largest in Southern Africa with a south to north span of more than 380 kilometres and has a vast selection of animal species. The evenings are particularly rewarding when you hear the sounds of Africa from the camps.

Depart from Cape Town and drive eastwards via the beautiful coastal route between Gordon’s Bay and Hermanus, a seaside holiday town ( Hermanus is the best place in the World to spot Whales from land - July to Dec). After lunch we drive on to Mossel Bay. Here we visit arguably the oldest post office in Africa, the Post Office Tree and the site of the first landfall, made by the Portuguese explorer Bartholomew Dias in 1488.

We travel over the Outeniqua Mountains to the Little Karoo to visit an Ostrich Show Farm for some unique experiences including ostrich racing. A ride on a back of an ostrich is not for the fainthearted. We visit the Cango caves, regarded as one of South Africa's foremost natural wonders. The fascinating calcite caves comprises an underground wonderland of stalactites and stalagmites. Visit Oudtshoorn, also called the "Feather capital" of the world, as over ninety percent of the world's ostrich farms are found here.
Overnight at La Plume Guest House.

After breakfast we visit the Cango Wildlife Ranch and Valley of Ancients, an endangered species breeding facility extraordinaire. Then depart for George and Wilderness National Park. We skirt around the lakes with stops at scenic viewpoints to Knysna. The town is situated on the edge of the Knysna Lagoon with its entrance to the sea guarded by two promontories known as the "Heads". The area also falls within a National Park proclaimed to conserve the extraordinary natural beauty of the lakelands and adjacent indigenous forests. Knysna also offers shopping opportunities of unusual locally made art and craft, etc. We join a sundowner cruise on the lagoon.

We explore Knysna and travel further via Plettenberg Bay for a short visit. Then we traverse through magnificently scenic river valley passes. We visit the Tsitsikamma National Park (Khoisan for 'The place of much water" stretching over 100 km of wild and rocky coastline characterised by massive cliffs, narrow isolated beaches and shady indigenous forests along the river valleys. Our next stop is Storms River with the impressive Paul Sauer Bridge across the valley towering some 139 m above the river. The final part of our journey takes us past a few coastal holiday villages to Port Elizabeth, also called the 'Friendly City' for a short city tour.

We drive eastwards via Witbank and Middelburg to Nelspruit and enter the Kruger National Park in the south. Our encounter with the wild life starts here. Tonight we enter our camp for dinner and overnight

Today is completely devoted to game viewing as we search for the 'Big Five' amongst other animals. We reach our camp at sunset for dinner and overnight. Some may want to do a night drive in an open game viewing vehicle utilising high powered spotlights to find the nocturnal animals (optional).

After a final game drive and breakfast, we leave the park and drive via Klaserie and the Abel Erasmus Pass to the Escarpment and visit Blyde River Canyon, Bourke's Luck Potholes, God's Window and the Pinnacle Rock. Travel to Sabie where we overnight.

Our first stop is at the Lone Creek falls before we visit the town of Pilgrim’s Rest, the museum. Take a walk through the main street and get carried away to the late nineteenth century when this little village was bustling with activity as a result of the alluvial gold found here.Then we travel to Johannesburg arriving late afternoon.