The Garden Route: A Journey For The Books

You might have been wondering where I’ve been. Delinquent on the blog posts, I know, but I promise to write with some regularity now that my life has some semblance of, well, regularity. This past week, I’ve been backpacking across the garden route, which is a series of little towns along South Africa’s southern coastline. It was an incredible time for a multitude of reasons. Lots of firsts, lots of food, lots of interesting people. It might take me a couple posts to chronicle, but I’ll do my best. Let’s start at the beginning. Sometime last week, in the midst of a ubiquitous iced coffee at Cocoa Wahwah, I was talking to a group of girls on my program about what to do in the last week before classes start. It has been so much fun exploring Cape Town, but we were all in agreement that it would be fun to see some more of the country. Lindsay and Erin, two brave and fabulous girls on my program, planned a trip along the garden route. They took care of everything from transportation to hostels to activities that we could do along the way. It sounded awesome, so Olivia, Brittany, and I decided to jump right in. We went to STA Travel and booked our tickets on the Baz Bus, which is South Africa’s backpacker bus. It was pretty inexpensive and easy to book, so that was good. I’m a big fan of the Baz Bus. Fast forward a couple of days. I pack up my little carry-on suitcase and throw some granola bars in a bag. It’s about 7am and my roommate Ian and I head out into the early morning, ready for our backpacking adventure. We meet up with the rest of the Upper Liesbeek crew and head over to the hostel where we are to meet the Baz Bus. Between the Upper Liesbeek and Osborne Road groups, we were 13 people all together. It was a lot of people to travel together, but it ended up working out really well. We waited at a hostel in the Observatory neighborhood for about 45 minutes before the Baz Bus arrived. We really had no idea of what to expect. The bus rolled up with a little trailer behind for our luggage, and our excited driver Sam popped out and helped us throw all of our giant bags in the back. The Baz Bus is colorful and well run. It seats about 20 people and goes door-to-door, bringing travelers to most of the backpackers (hostels) along South Africa’s coast, even venturing into Kruger and Mozambique. We pile in and Jackie, our resident hippie, pops in some awesome reggae. We’re off to Wilderness, the first town on our epic journey. We hit four towns in total- Wilderness, Knysna, Plettenberg Bay, and Storms’ River- with some interesting pit stops on the way. I figure the most logical and relatively obnoxious way to chronicle them will be in installments. Epic.