Discovering South Africa's amazing Garden Route

Big days out don’t come bigger. I watched wallowing whales, their tails poised in the air before vanishing beneath the ocean swell. Then I trekked with a tusker, its trunk gently snuffling the palm of my hand.

Close contact with the world’s two biggest mammals on land and sea in just five hours. But that’s South Africa, a giant of a nation where size matters.

Its landmass is vast, 471,000 square miles with a 1,500-mile coastline linking the Atlantic and Indian oceans. From the Drakensberg mountains to the arid Karoo and lush Garden Route, it makes you gasp.

Above all else, is the size of South Africa’s ambition to forge a united nation from the ugliness of apartheid. It is a dream in progress. But such strides are being made that next year the nation hosts football’s World Cup. Tourism is a vital economic force in the realisation of this rainbow vision. In the 15 years since Nelson MandelaNelson Mandela walked to freedom and ignited hopes of a brighter future, the country has become one of the world’s top holiday destinations.

For the first-time visitor there can be no better introduction than the spectacular Garden Route, stretching along the coastline of the Western Cape for 125 miles. Along the way it takes in beaches, lakes, forest, mountains and bush.

The natural arrival airport is George, roughly halfway along the route. But as no flight was available we jetted from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth. From here, our tour guide drove us 170 miles to Knysna, where we were staying at the luxurious Pezula spa hotel overlooking a spectacular bay. Knysna (Place of Wood, after its 46,000 hectares of forest) is an important conservation area and a year-round holiday spot with lush forests, stunning beaches and world-class golf courses.

With its 21sq km estuary a protected marine reserve, it was named as one of the top 100 destinations in the world in the 2008 Travellers Choice awards.

I was there in South Africa’s winter, when the main event was the famous oyster festival.

Incredibly, the Knysna oyster beds produce an annual crop of 20million oysters and about 200,000 are consumed at the festival. Dishes ranged from firefly smoked oysters, with black sesame seed ice cream, to wild champagne oysters with homecured salmon wasabi and lemon mayonnaise. That’s some aphrodisiac.

Rising above the hills of Knysna is the local township – a sprawling mass of containers converted to shops and homes cobbled together from planks of wood, corrugated iron and sheets of plastic, spread like a gash over the hillside.

Seventy per cent of Knysna’s 60,000 population live here and it is a humbling sight to see so many exist on so little.

The people are welcoming and proud of their efforts to rise above their circumstances and money generated from tours goes to improvement schemes.

As he offered us delicious bread in his brick-built home, our Xhosa guide Mwande Kondlo urged us: “We want you to tell others how we live and how we are trying to improve our lives.” East of Knysna lies Plettenberg Bay, which, even in the heart of a South African winter, languished under a blue sky in 80F temperatures.

On an open boat carrying some 20 passengers we motored a mile offshore before the skipper cut the engines.

Suddenly, in the distance, a fountain of seawater indicated a humpback whale. We were too far away to see the magnificent creature but, running inshore, our luck was in.

A Southern Right whale slowly broke the surface only yards from us, exposing its sleek black flanks before sinking underwater. Then three others surfaced, oblivious to our intrusion.

Full-size, these mammals can measure 18metres and weigh up to 80 tons. Being so close to such latent power, we were stunned into awed silence.

Plettenberg Bay also boasts an elephant sanctuary for rescued animals as well as a monkey sanctuary and the world’s largest free flight aviary holding 2,000 birds.

Six jumbos live there and roam at will. Visitors are encouraged to walk with the animals – their trunks cradled in the palm of your hand.

It is an extraordinary experience to be so close to such massive beasts. Their looming presence is almost unnerving as they silently push you from behind, their power clear yet gently kept in check. Returning west to George, we travelled north to Oudtshoorn en route to the placid township of Prince Albert on the southern rim of the Great Karoo.

The Karoo is one of nature’s great wonders and a giant arid home to Stone Age archaeological sites, game animals and 9,000 plant species.

Emerging via the 16-mile Meiringspoort gorge, the clouds disappear and the climate changes. A verdant valley opens up and soon the wild solitude is left behind and you are in the oasis of Prince Albert, where the irrigation water from the mountains is supplied by kerbside canals.

Prince Albert, which hosts an annual olive festival, is a gem with Karoo, Cape Dutch and Victorian buildings. I stayed in the Dennehof guest house, one of the town’s oldest homesteads built in 1835 and redolent of an age when outback life was a struggle for survival.

From here, you can cycle the Swartberg pass (owners Ria and Lindsay Steyn will take you up so you can descend without effort!), visit the former lost community of Gamkaskloof in its hidden valley or view the sensational Karoo sunsets.

From Prince Albert it is a 230-mile run west to Cape Town. The route took us through the vast open spaces of the Little Karoo, past the snow-capped Matroosberg mountains until the Hex River valley opened up, signalling the start of the Cape vineyards. By the roadside, vendors sold huge boxes of grapes for £3. Neat Cape Dutch homesteads nestled behind white fences amid glorious scenery.