Garden Route & Klein Karoo

South Africa’s Greatest Road Trip

Ask any South African biker which single route they’d recommend and nine out of ten will say the Garden Route. It’s not just one road — it’s a sequence of environments that shift around every corner: ancient Afromontane forest, a turquoise lagoon, a coastline carved by the Indian Ocean, and then suddenly the open, semi-arid Klein Karoo, with the Swartberg range turning orange in the evening light.

We ride east from Cape Town through the Overberg, crossing the Houhoek Pass and descending into the apple and pear country of the Elgin Valley. The road climbs again over the Houwhoek and then sweeps down to the Overberg coast at Hermanus — already beautiful, and we haven’t reached the Garden Route yet.

At George the route enters the famous stretch. We ride through Wilderness, where the Touws River meanders between forested dunes before finding the sea. Knysna is a natural anchor for the trip — the lagoon with its dramatic Heads, the oysters, the old timber town atmosphere. We spend at least one night here.

East of Knysna the road climbs and dips through the forest on the way to Plettenberg Bay and the Tsitsikamma. The suspension bridge over the Storms River mouth is a short walk from the road, and nothing prepares you for the view down into the gorge.

The Klein Karoo extension takes us over the Outeniqua Pass to Oudtshoorn — ostrich farms, the Cango Caves, and the extraordinary Swartberg Pass, an 1880s gravity-defying road that climbs 1,500 metres through a river gorge of red and orange Witteberg quartzite.

4-day, 5-day, and 7-day options available depending on how many side routes you want to include.