Category: Road Trip

South Africa’s Garden Route

South Africa’s garden route is beautiful and world renowned as a great road trip. We drove from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, with stops in between, and the views were gorgeous.

About South Africa’s Garden Route

Technically, The Garden Route begins west of Stellenbosch, our first stop after Cape Town, and runs from Mossel Bay in the west to Storms River in the east, so we covered that and then some.

South Africa's Garden Route map
Garden Route map

Between Stellenbosch and Port Elizabeth, there are a lot of beautiful stops to make!

Oak Valley Wines

Oak Valley Estate on South Africa's Garden Route
Nice view with some wine at Oak Valley

Oak Valley was one of those fortuitous stops along South Africa’s garden route because we needed a break from the car. Plus, we had driven to the fringes of the wine region, and we wanted to visit another winery while we could. This was a good choice: the estate has beautiful grounds and some nice wines too!

On the way back to the highway, we stopped at an incredible “farm stand”/tourist attraction, where we stocked up on picnic foods and local craft cider.

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One Night in Stellenbosch

The drive from Cape Town into South Africa’s Garden Route has to be one of the world’s most scenic drives. We spent three days driving it, stopped at beautiful parks along the sea, wineries, and a cheetah sanctuary, and determined that three days on the Garden Route and one night in Stellenbosch was nowhere near long enough.

After our kayaking adventure, our next destination was Stellenbosch, located in The Cape Winelands, the wine capital of South Africa.

Remhoogte Wine Estate
Remhoogte Wine Estate Stellenbosch
The view at Remhoogte Wine Estate

The highlight of our visit to South Africa’s famous wine region was our stay in the beautiful guesthouse at the stunning Remhoogte Wine Estate. Overlooking a lake, the winery is home to zebras, wildebeest, impala, and quite a few friendly dogs. If you spend only one night in Stellenbosch, stay there, and try to go for longer.

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Kruger Park Accommodations: Punda Maria Rest Camp

Kruger Park is huge: one of the largest game parks in Africa, it covers over 19,000 sq kilometers, and it has almost 40 different accommodation options. We visited Kruger National Park for 5 days in December, and stayed in a different camp each of 5 nights. Each one was quite different from the previous, and we enjoyed all of them! Here’s where we stayed our first night in the park and what it’s like to stay in Punda Maria Rest Camp.

Getting to Kruger pArk

We made Kruger Park our first stop in South Africa, so flew to Johannesburg Airport where we rented a car for the drive to the park. You can get to the park quite quickly as it is so large. However, we planned our trip from the north to the south of Kruger, so it was supposed to be a 7 hour drive. Factoring in holiday traffic, it’s a slog. But worth it because Kruger Park is a bucket-list destination.

Booking Kruger park Accommodations

We booked our rooms in advance through the Kruger Park website. We booked in August for our Christmas stay, and some of the places were already full, but we still got good rooms for each night.  Christmas is a busy time at Kruger: a lot of South Africans spend their holidays there and plan well in advance. If you can book earlier in the year, do so.

Options range throughout the park – from north to south, you can camp out or stay in fancier places.

This is the first post about our accommodations in Kruger Park.

Punda Maria Rest Camp location

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