Tsitsikamma

At Storms River Mouth, the tea-dark waters of the Storms River carve through a forested gorge and spill into the Indian Ocean — the wild heart of the Tsitsikamma section of Garden Route National Park, folded into that larger park in 2009. The section's signature crossing is a 77-metre pedestrian suspension bridge, first strung across the river mouth in 1969 and rebuilt in a phased 2026 refurbishment; a short boardwalk of stairs and timber walkways reaches it through coastal fynbos and ferns, an easy walk suited to most ages. Behind it, the five-day, roughly 42-kilometre Otter Trail begins its clifftop run west toward Nature's Valley.

Offshore lies the Tsitsikamma Marine Protected Area, declared in 1964 and one of Africa's oldest marine reserves — for decades managed as a fully no-take zone, though since a contested 2016 rezoning about a fifth of it has been opened to limited shore angling — protecting some 60 kilometres of shoreline and 186 square kilometres of ocean. The largely undisturbed water is a nursery for reef fish and a corridor for southern right and humpback whales and pods of dolphins in season, while the Cape clawless otter that gives the Otter Trail its name still works the surf line.

Above and below the waterline, Tsitsikamma has become the Garden Route's adventure capital. Guided kayak-and-lilo trips paddle up the gorge and beneath the suspension bridge, and canopy tours zip between platforms high in the indigenous yellowwood forest. A short drive west, the Bloukrans Bridge carries what is billed as the world's highest commercial bridge bungee jump, a 216-metre plunge. The whole coast sits in the malaria-free Eastern Cape, making it an unusually easy adventure base for families.