Report Part 2 from „Männer aktuell“ Garden Route + Eastern Cape
Part II
From the beach into the bush
The Garden Route runs along the Indian Ocean. Here, you can experience South Africa’s most attractive sides. If you saw everything, you can reward yourself with a safari in a game reserve.
Text: Jürgen Biniak
When you leave the city Heidelberg, the nicest part of your trip still lies ahead. Unlike the romantic city in Germany, which is the tourist attraction par excellence, the South African city, a few thousand kilometres farther south, does not tempt you at all. Only the name reminds you of the German immigrants a long time ago. And yet Heidelberg, which is located halfway between Cape Town and Knysna, at least has got a touristic title: the gateway to the Garden Route.
The regions along the Garden Route in the Western Cape Province are considered to be the most attractive ones in the whole country. The most South Africa tourists that start at Cape Town will not see more than the Garden Route at the Western Cape, because there is just too much to see and experience.
It will only take you one day in a rental car from Cape Town to arrive at the Garden Route. The name speaks in its favour. The narrow strip of land runs along the coast of the Indian Ocean and features especially fertile and exuberant vegetation. Because of the humid ocean climate the vegetation turns to a real ocean of blooms after the rains. If you go along the Garden Route during this time (autumn, winter), you will feel like in a botanic garden. Additionally, there is the breathtaking coast area.
Mossel Bay is the first station for a stay when you left Heidelberg behind. You should make a stop for swimming and hiking, because the Mossel Bay has got mile long sandy beaches. Even during the main season when the people from Cape Town come here, the beach offers many opportunities to enjoy nature almost on your own.
The route goes on via George (400 km in the east from Cape Town) to the nearby Wilderness. The further east you go, the warmer the water of the Indian Ocean and the air will become. Thus, even in the South African winter you will feel like in subtropical regions in Wilderness. The attraction of Wilderness is a long sandy beach, an inviting sea – and a gay guesthouse. The “Palms Wilderness” is managed by a Suisse. It offers excellent cooking and is located in an idyllic ambiance just a stone’s throw away from the beach. It is the perfect spot for nature lovers, because the surroundings offer rivers, lagoons and lakes which invite to going for walks, canoeing and hiking.
Another highlight of the Garden Route is Knysna which is only a few kilometres away. The idyllic little seaport is located right by a huge lagoon. It is a paradise for lovers of sea creatures. The restaurants in Knysna offer oysters and crayfish as a special delicacy. You will not regret it, if you decide to stay some days at Knysna. The surroundings seems like meant for excursions – it is a virtual paradise for hikers. The optimally signposted tracks lead you through extended forests with Yellowwood Trees, which you cannot find in whole South Africa. Canoeists can paddle all day long from one lake to the other. People who like it more comfortable can just go by steam train to visit the seaside places.
There is a gay milieu at Knysna, too. Homosexuals from the Cape Region have bought houses here and fixed it up nattily. At some places you will already recognize them because of the rainbow flags. There is even a small Pride Festival including a procession each year in May. The clergy and the conservative inhabitants do not like this at all and they would rather ban the colourful ado from the small town. But where gay people have once established, you cannot banish them that easily – especially not from such a heavenly place on earth. On your ramble through restaurants and bars in the evening, you are bound to meet gay tourists and locals and people from the other side of the lagoon.
You can also explore the other places worth seeing of the Garden Route in day trips from here. Plettenberg Bay or Storm’s River Mouth are such places located in a terrific coastal scenery. The Garden Route ends farther in the east on the way to Port Elizabeth. It is not worth to stop in the seaport and industrial city unless you will fly back to Cape Town or to Johannesburg from here.
But everyone who wants to make an Africa specific experience, namely a safari in a game reserve, has to pass through Port Elizabeth. The Addo Elephant National Park is about 50 kilometres in the north east of Port Elizabeth. As the name already tells, you will move very close to the wild pachyderms here. If you want to see other animals, too, especially the so called “Big Five” – elephant, buffalo, rhino, lion and giraffe – you do not have to go to the world-famous Krüger National Park in the north of the country. You can experience the Krüger Park en miniature quasi “just around the corner” near the small city Grahamstown, about 70 kilometres from the Addo Park.
The Kwande Reserve has got an area of 16,000 hectares and offers contacts with wild animals as you will rarely have them in the Krüger National Park. The visitors are accommodated in luxuriously equipped logdes in the bush so that they enjoy the nature from the first moment – even if there is a secure and comfortable distance between them. In the early morning or shortly before night dawns, you can go on safaris through the wilderness in open jeeps. You will be accompanied by experienced gamekeepers. Cavorting gazelles and trotting gnus will soon be also-rans, but seeing a giraffe is a more intensive experience. If you have the chance to take photos of an elephant or a buffalo, the photo safari was worth it for most people. You will see lions or rhinos rather infrequently and you have to be really lucky to see a leopard, because it is the shyest animal in the bush. That is why it is almost not dangerous – even if an inexperienced tourist might feel a prickle – to have dinner among the African evening sky after a successful safari to clink glasses to the animals. Who knows, maybe there is a leopard lurking.
When you arrived at the lodge you will inevitably look back on the day and conclude that there is hardly a better end to a South Africa vacation.
Information & tips
+ South African Airways flies from Frankfurt to Cape Town three times a week without stop from the 1. September.
Outbound flights Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at 19.50 o’clock (arrival 7.45 o’clock), return flights Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 17.15 o’clock (no time difference!)
+ You can get tourist information on www.southafrica.net and gay friendly recommendations on www.pinkroute.co.za – the tour operator Pink Elephant Safaris from Essen (Bahnstr. 11, 45257 essen, tel. 0202-486034) is specialized in gay friendly tours through the Western Cape Province and the rest of South Africa, information on www.pink-elephant-safaris.de
+ You can get information on the gay milieu (and guesthouses at Knysna) in the international gay Guide SPARTACUS 2004/05 (Bruno Gmünder Verlag, 25,95 €) and on the website of the magazine GAY PAGES (www.gaypagessa.co.za) and the monthly newspaper EXIT (www.exit.co.za)
+ Palms Wilderness, a gay-managed guesthouse and restaurant at Wilderness at the Garden Route, airport in George (15 minutes by car)
+ Kwandwe Lodge, luxurious apartments in the Kwande Game Reserve, gayfriendly, including bush explorations and game safaris, about 100 kilometres north east of Port Elizabeth
+ Gay events 2004: 18. – 25. September Johannesburg Pride Festival including a party (25.9.) and Cape Town Pride from 16. – 19. December including the Mother City Queer Pary (18.12.) and the parade (19.12.)
