My toes were hanging off the edge of Bloukrans Bridge, 216 meters above the Bloukrans River, and somewhere in the back of my mind I was doing the math on whether the nylon tow strap around my ankles was the same gauge as the one I keep in the back of my Jeep for pulling cars out of ditches. It was. I jumped anyway.
That moment pretty much sums up South Africa’s Garden Route. It is not a subtle place. It doesn’t ease you in. Seven weeks of Africa chaos had already ground me down — I’d crossed the Zambian border that morning through a three-taxi shell game that cost $55 instead of $30, paid another $50 US just for the privilege of being American, and landed in Port Elizabeth already behind schedule, already getting screwed by a tour operator, and already developing what I can only describe as a full-scale Africa Arse situation that would haunt me for the better part of a week. But here’s the thing about the Garden Route: it doesn’t care about any of that. It’s just going to be spectacular whether you’re ready for it or not.
Nomad Tours Can Go Straight to Hell
Let me save you some trouble. Nomad Tours markets itself as a rugged, adventurous overland experience for fit, flexible travelers between 16 and 55. What they delivered was a five-hour late pickup, lunch defined as bread, lettuce, and mayonnaise-smothered potatoes, a tour group that included two ten-year-old girls and a late-60s German couple who spoke zero English, and a driver who responded to every complaint with a fresh excuse about whose fault it was. When I missed a full day at Tsitsikamma National Park, their compensation offer was $30 USD. I told them what they could do with that.
I bailed after two nights. The practical exit went like this: Clive — who runs the Bloukrans Backpackers next to the bungee jump and appears to know every living soul on the Garden Route — drove me to Plettenberg Bay, arranged a discounted shark dive, and waited with me while I sorted a rental car from Avis. The car turned out to be a manual transmission Chevy Spark, right-hand drive. I hadn’t driven a stick in over ten years and had never shifted with my left hand. The clutch was still on the left, which I considered a win. If you’re traveling South Africa lean and moving fast, a small car you don’t fully trust is still better than a tour truck you completely don’t trust.
Meanwhile, back at Tsitsikamma the night before I bailed, I’d hotwired a Russian-made matchbox car for a German tourist who’d lost his keys jumping off the bridge. Four wires on the ignition, a filed-down hairpin, Clive helping me wrench a mechanically-locked steering column while about fifteen locals watched. Took maybe 45 minutes. I wired in a toggle switch and some electrical tape for the ignition. Charged them in beer. Sometimes Africa just hands you a situation and you deal with it.
The Bridge, the Cage, and the Chum
The bungee jump at Bloukrans is the highest land-based jump on the planet. Not in Africa — on Earth. Two hundred and sixteen meters. You pay $115 USD, they weigh you (I was 92kg, down 15 pounds from home, which felt like a small victory), you sign the paperwork, and then you walk out on a catwalk made entirely of grating 200 meters above the river. No solid surfaces to retreat to. Chain-link fence on both sides. The nerves hit somewhere on that catwalk and I made an unscheduled stop behind a bush.
At the edge, they strap you in, count down from five, and you jump. Or in my case you bend your knees, make a very small leap, and immediately contribute a very loud sound to the canyon that I’m told was audible to everyone south of the equator. The free-fall sensation before you right yourself is genuinely terrifying — pure uncontrolled falling, arms pinwheeling, no ground visible. Then your head points down, you see the river, and your brain shifts from panic to something that feels almost like peace for about two seconds before the bungee loads up and rebounds you 30 meters back into the air. Four rebounds total. Then you just hang there, 190 meters below the bridge, blood rushing to your head, grinning like an idiot.
My Irish travel companion Colm stood at the edge for ten full minutes delivering a stream of F-bombs and “I can’t do this” declarations before the jump assistant finally said, flatly, “Dude, you have to let go of me.” They got him to the edge. Five, four — push. Over he went. Caitlin and I nearly fell off the bridge laughing.
Two days later, outside Mossel Bay, I was in a surface cage in the Indian Ocean watching a 2.5-meter juvenile female great white work her way around the boat. The process: motor out, drop rancid fish bouillabaisse over the side, wait. The group the day before had seen nothing — the sharks were mid-migration out of the bay. Then one of our cage-mates got seasick and contributed her own chum to the water, and within minutes the spotter called “FROM THE FRONT — divers down.” I shoved myself under, and there she was. Grey and white, teeth exactly as advertised by Discovery Channel Shark Week (which was filmed in this bay, for what it’s worth). At one point a shark came straight at the cage to my right and chomped the bars twice. I giggled like a child. I’m not ashamed.
The Cape Does Not Mess Around
The drive south from Mossel Bay along the coast is the kind of thing that makes you forget you’ve had Africa Arse for four days and haven’t slept properly in a week. We picked up Colm and Caitlin near Kangaroo Caves and pushed on to Simons Town, arriving late and checking into a backpackers with a long balcony overlooking the harbor, the South African Navy base sitting right across the water. In the morning the Navy crew ran past in formation doing call-and-response chants while I sat outside in the 50-degree air with coffee, feeling approximately human for the first time since Zambia.
At Boulder’s Beach outside Simons Town, I learned that African penguins are a thing that exists. Nobody mentioned this to me. They were waddling around on the boulders, nesting in the bushes, doing penguin things 34 degrees south of the equator. A busload of tourists arrived approximately 30 seconds after us, and I took an elbow from a very determined Japanese grandmother who wanted my spot on the walkway. Fair enough.
Then the Cape of Good Hope. The weather rolled in as we parked — classic TIA — so we ate first: a glass of Stellenbosch Chardonnay and fresh whitefish at the restaurant at the reserve while the clouds pushed through. By the time we finished, it was clearing. The hike up to the old lighthouse is windy and cold and the trail is exposed. Standing at the southernmost point of the continent, watching two oceans collide on the rocks below, I went quiet. Seven weeks: Egypt, Nairobi, the Masai Mara, Madagascar, Zambia, Victoria Falls, and now this. Nine thousand miles from home, standing at the bottom of a continent. Colm thought something was wrong because I’d stopped talking. Nothing was wrong.
The drive back north along the cliff road is one I’d do again just for its own sake — 1,000-foot drops on one side, the tallest lighthouse on the African coast somewhere above you, three-meter waves with actual surfers on them below, the sun dropping through red and gold in the west.
Stellenbosch, One Accidentally Booked Flight, and a Guy Named Trevor
The wine country around Stellenbosch sits about 45 minutes east of Cape Town. I was staying at Cultivar Guest Lodge on a vineyard, which in a different week would have been pure paradise. Rolling hills, mountains in the distance, morning sun on the vines. I woke up actually feeling good and made the executive decision to spend the day tasting wine, which is exactly the right call after a week of crisis management, bungee jumping, and intestinal warfare.
The problem was I also needed a flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg the next morning to catch my international connection home. I hadn’t booked it. The manager at Cultivar — genuine hero — let me use his personal desk and computer. I booked the flight on Kulula.com, clicked the wrong date, and ended up with a ticket for that same afternoon. Changes within 12 hours cost extra and required calling in. The hold music representative was named Trevor. Trevor put me on hold for 35 minutes, disconnected me, and repeated this process six times across three hours. I missed the flight I’d accidentally purchased. I continued calling Trevor from the car while driving to Cape Town. Trevor remained unmoved.
Cape Town itself is genuinely impressive — Table Mountain announcing itself from the highway, the city below it doing a reasonable impression of San Francisco. We rode the rotating cable car to the top (cold, windy, spectacular), and I hiked back down through the rocks while Colm and Caitlin took the car back. That night we ate at a place called Mama Africa — kudu, crocodile, ostrich, springbok, venison — and worked our way up Long Street, which had bars stacked against bars for about a kilometer. I sorted my flight at the airport the next morning by arguing in person, paid the difference between yesterday’s price and today’s, and got on the plane.
Verdict
South Africa’s Garden Route is worth every kilometer of the drive, and the drive itself is the point — rent your own car, ditch the group tour, and go as far south as the road goes. Budget around R1,200–1,500 (~$85–105 USD at 2010 rates) for the bungee, $115 for the shark dive, and whatever a Chevy Spark costs you at Avis in Plettenberg Bay. The Tsitsikamma coastline alone — jagged rock shelves, dolphins, the occasional whale, four hours on the Otter Trail with almost no one else on it — is worth flying to South Africa for. The Garden Route rewards you for traveling light, staying flexible, and not needing things to go as planned. Seven weeks of Africa had made me genuinely good at all three of those things, which is probably the only reason I made it to the Cape of Good Hope with my sanity more or less intact.
Got questions about the Garden Route, the shark dive operators, or how to handle a bungee jump when your legs stop working? Drop them at Ask WildWilliam — I’ve been to 40+ countries and I answer everything.