Mzanzitravel Magazine Issue 10

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Ben1183 / iStock
Garden Route National Park …
perhaps the original Garden of Eden
Like the biblical Garden of Eden, this magnificent national park on South Africa’s
Garden Route seems like the place from where all life sprang forth. Combining
several parks, reserves and conservation areas into one, it is a true paradise
of mountains, rivers, lakes, ancient forests, fynbos, deep gorges and exquisite
coastline stretching across two provinces. And yet, driving along the N2 highway
between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, you could easily miss some of its most
mesmerising parts…unless you turn off to explore these truly hidden gems.
The Garden Route National Park is still a relatively new park, created only in
2009 through the combining of the Wilderness and Tsitsikamma national parks,
the Wilderness Lakes area, the Knysna Lagoon area and some 52,000 hectares
of newly proclaimed land into one park spanning 121,000 hectares across the
Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces.
Considered to be one of the most important conservation areas in South Africa
because of its ancient natural history, biodiversity and astonishing beauty, the
park sets a new standard of “conservation without boundaries”. It is also part of
a plan to increase the areas in South Africa under formal conservation protection
from 6% to 8% of the country’s surface area. The park seeks to promote a new
conservation model for the country, by engaging the more than 1,000 private
landowners who border the park and the surrounding communities in stewardship
programmes.
Some of its major features are the unique Wilderness lakes system, a 60,500
hectare section of indigenous forest – the largest in the country - and its fynbos
treasure that makes it part of the Cape Floral Region, inscribed on the World
Heritage List in 2004. The Cape Floral Region is one of the six Floral Kingdoms of
the world and is the smallest yet relatively the most diverse. It is recognised as one
of the world’s “hottest hotspots” for its diversity of endemic and threatened plants,
and contains outstanding examples of significant ongoing ecological, biological
and evolutionary processes.
It is this beauty and the natural treasure of the area that gave the region its name
as the world-famous Garden Route of South Africa. The current park starts more
or less at the bustling town of George in the west, then stretches across most of
the area between the coast along the N2 highway, and the inland N9 highway,
also known as the famous Route 62, almost all the way to Port Elizabeth in the
east. Within this general area are delightful towns and villages like Wilderness,
Sedgefield, Knysna, Plettenberg Bay, Nature’s Valley, Storms River, and
Kareedouw, with the world-famous surfing towns of Jeffreys Bay and Cape St
Francis at the eastern end.
The Serpentine and Touw Rivers run through the Wilderness section of the park,
connecting the Wilderness Lagoon and a series of lakes - Elandsvlei, Langvlei,
Rondervlei, Swartvlei, and the Swartvlei estuary at the town of Sedgefield, while
the landlocked single lake of Groenvlei has no connection to the sea or the other
lakes. Seen from the air, the five lakes of South Africa’s foremost Lakes District
form a dramatic picture of dark, glistening bodies of water surrounded by forests,
reeds and grassland, and interconnected by snaking rivers that meet up with the
sea through large, blue lagoons and estuaries. All of this is locked in between the
majestic Outeniqua mountain range on one side, and the sand dunes, beaches
and river estuaries along the Indian Ocean coastline on the other side.
The focal feature of the Knysna Lakes section of the park is the Knysna Estuary
or lagoon, with the town of Knysna nestling along its banks. The town owes its
origin to the magnificent giant trees of the surrounding forests which gave rise to a
forestry industry around 1763. Settlers soon arrived here, among them historical
figures like Stephanus Terblanche, who owned the farm Melkhoutfontein, on which
most of Knysna stands today; George Rex, the self-proclaimed illegitimate son
of King George III, who founded the town of Knysna and later owned all of the
land surrounding the estuary; John Benn, the legendary pilot who steered ships
to safety through the Heads; and Johann Meeding, who was appointed by the
governor of the Cape to try and curb the rate of exploitation of the indigenous
forests. But for tens of thousands of years before the European settlers arrived,
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