Glorious Garden Route
Today is the end of our Garden Route road trip, a laid-back bunch of days spent meandering east along South Africa’s coastal playground.
As days go by, we’ve watched the scenery slowly change – first mountain ranges and glowing light like New Mexico, then jagged grey boulders much like the Canadian shield, and finally sand and shrubbery evocative of California. This place is a collage of other places we’ve been, plus a bonus baboon or two strolling down the highway to remind us we’re in Africa.
There’s something lovely about how laid-back this part of the world is. On single-lane roads, we learned the universal language of hazard lights – blinking to negotiate a pass, blinking to thank a fellow driver, even blinking to acknowledge the thanks. In tiny guest houses and on remote nature reserves, meanwhile, we’ve gone to bed with stars overhead and woken up to a cacophony of chirping birds.
All along the route – from Mossel Bay to Knysna to Plettenberg Bay to Port Elizabeth – nothing has been particularly crammed or commercialized. We've seen not one souvenir store, encountered nary a tacky pamphlet, and spotted just one tour group. My husband learned to surf on a stretch of ocean all his own – just him and the instructor – while I sat on white sand nearby, reading under the shadow cast by a South African flag. We went paragliding and observed a perfectly pristine landscape – just hot sun, roaring water, and postage-stamp-sized homes dotting the ground below. It’s felt, at times, like we have this place to ourselves.
Yesterday, we took a detour to Plettenberg Bay’s main street to visit a few bookstores. One, The Book Nook, really epitomizes the Garden Route’s chilled out charm. It’s a tiny and tough-to-find place – we almost abandoned the search before spotting it in a leafy subterranean courtyard – run by a friendly old woman. Though a bit disorganized and disheveled, the details of this place were so lovely – the sun-bleached spines of books by the window, the owner’s lunch teetering on stacks of paperbacks, inventory spilled out across the floor, even the worn old calculator she used to ring up my purchase.
And best of all, this place clearly means something to locals. In just five minutes, three different people stopped by to inquire after the shop owner’s health, to ask how business was, and to despairingly discuss the upcoming “rage,” when thousands of students done school for the summer descend upon Plett for eight days of non-stop partying. One man asked the owner if she gets busier during the “rage” and she laughed aloud, saying “Not at all, those kids don’t read much!” Hilarious.
