They acknowledge the fact that they will need more constant health care and tighter security at some stage, but they envisage a more freelance approach to retirement initially. They want to interact directly with society and are looking forward to having a good and enjoyable time whilst in reasonable strength. People with this approach to retirement in South Africa, will then most likely resettle and buy a house or a plot in order to have their retirement home near a favoured place like the ocean, or somewhere where the climate is mild and the soul satisfied.

Friends and family become more and more important as time goes by. If a couple nearing retirement make the choice to retire where their children are, they might lose out on the proximity of friends and emotional loss could occur. The best choice would be to settle into retirement where both friends and children are nearby.

If they however move at a later stage in life into a retirement village that offers health care and more security, they begin all over as strangers in the new environment. That can be debilitating too and older people do not like too much stress and feeling unsettled.

They can therefore consider buying a house or apartment in a retirement village of their choice and then plan to rent it out until they themselves want to occupy it later on. As owners, they will become acquainted with the culture of the retirement village and they might just be able to convince friends still out at their preferred retirement spot, to purchase a house or apartment in their chosen retirement village too.

This way, they can look forward to a more intimate friendship at a time when there is less wanderlust and more need for slower and qualitative time. At the same time they secure a retirement village house or apartment at today’s prices, knowing that demand tend to drive retirement property continuously higher.

A two step approach might be the right modus operandi for people with a more individualistic approach to retirement. Owning a unit in Summervale Retirement Village in Gordons Bay or a retirement house in Stil Bay, might just be the perfect answer to your approach to retirement. And it makes financial sense too.

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Stil Bay has become a large village, but the lagoon and river see to it that the feel of intimacy does not get lost. You will love the unspoilt beach, fynbos and pleasant climate (only second to Hawaii in the world, it is said). You can take a boat for almost 15 kilometres up the river and this ensures a wealth of private fishing or photographic opportunities.

Water skiing is also well in demand by younger holiday makers. Stil Bay and Jongensfontein to the west of the town provide people with striking views on the whales that come visiting these shores between May and November every year. People that are already retired, or that may be considering to buy into the new planned retirement village in Stil Bay, will have ample time to follow these huge creatures as they glide through the waters.

You can have your game of golf where no noise - except perhaps your own cursing a poor chip - will be heard. Or if that is just a bit too frustrating, you can try your hand at bowls or go on hiking expeditions.
Life at Stil Bay did not start yesterday. Middle stone age artifacts tell the story of people habituating this area thousands of years ago. Ancient fish traps can still be seen around. People with time on their hands can indulge in the history of early mankind.

Modern amenities are all available, including shops, banks, medical facilities and restaurants. People who love the quietness of country life will adore the town. When the newly planned retirement village in Stil Bay starts to take shape, even more senior people will for sure be flocking this way.

Mossel Bay is less than an hour’s drive away. With its renowned hospital, huge shopping centre, movie theatre and wonderful restaurants, retired people will have more than enough to keep them thoroughly busy. As Stil Bay is but the gate to the Garden Route, retired couples can easily drive out to George, Knysna, Plettenberg Bay or turn inland to view the Kango Caves in Oudtshoorn or the little villages that lie in the heart of the Klein Karoo.

You can do all that and so much more, but when you return from a trip with the bottles of wine bought at one of the wine farms, classic second hand books bought in George, or an art piece in Knysna, you will be happy with your healthy and very safe little oasis that is Stil Bay’s retirement village.

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For a start, the Western Cape is traditionally known as the laid back part of South Africa. When the Voortrekkers left the Cape Province, driven to find their own areas where they could be independent, many families stayed put in the beauty of the Western Cape.

They did so because their roots had already sunk too deep in the soil that would feed the vines, apple orchards and evolving enterprises. Grapes take time to grow to fruition and you cannot rush the process. You have to let the seasons do the subtle coaching whilst you endeavour to understand the trends of the wind, the forming of clouds and the promise of the climate as it changes.

They also learned that countries would fight each other to raise their flag as the new victorious force around. And then in time another flag would be raised, but the harvesting of the grapes according to the seasons overshadowed the political enterprises. As it always will. And so the phlegmatic soul of the Western Cape was born.

The attraction to nature’s natural ways surfaced in the psyche of the people in the Western Cape and smells, sounds and the constantly changing beauty of the landscape through the cycle of seasons became ingrained in their daily enterprises.

Even the farmers of the Eastern Cape often visited Cape Town, bringing their goods to sell and their wool to be shipped abroad. In time Port Elizabeth would become their port to export, but they still flocked to Cape Town, the social hub of the time, in order to fathom the unique spirit floating through the air.

There were of course other attractions that thrilled the early visitors and the inhabitants of the Western Cape. There was Table Mountain, a solemn presence that still draws the awe of sailors as they enter Cape Town harbour. Many could not leave it again and settled around the growing town, where they could have a view of the inspiring mountain and where they could watch the fierce winds rolling white clouds over Table Mountain’s top to cover the evolving city. And there, with just a patch of salt water in between, floats an island that would in later centuries be the jail of a heroic sage.

Both the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean have a particular fresh smell where they compete for territory along the Western Cape coastline. Visitors, holiday makers and tourists will have the taint of that smell in their memories for a very long time.

Like giant rugged hands, there are blue mountain ranges that keep quaint villages like Stellenbosch, Franschoek and Paarl on this side and villages like Greyton, Robertson, Montagu, Ceres, Tulbagh and Riebeeck Wes on the other for a different and unique kind of experience.

The coastal villages along the whale route, Gordons Bay, Hermanus and Gans Bay also await the cosmopolitan population that explores the variety of experiences the Western Cape offers. Scenic mountain passes, unique fynbos and roaring waves shift constantly in and out of vision as one follows a quieting heart through the unending joys that the Western Cape offers.

Why then the interest in retirement villages in the Western Cape? There is just too much to do, too much to see, too much to experience to be bogged down to a lifestyle in areas that do not bring the faint smile of the winds, oceans, mountains and relaxed people right to your doorstep!

And so, the calls keep coming in about new developments regarding retirement villages in the Western Cape, as older people leave the rush of competitive life in order to settle down to what comes naturally in this mellow part of the world.

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You will have enough time on your hands not to rush explorations into Cape Town’s wealth of attractions. Whether it be Table Mountain, Robben Island or excursions into the beauty of places like Paarl,Gordons Bay and Franschoek, you will be able to indulge in the joys of visiting places that feed the soul.

Let’s take a look at some of the travel adventures you can plan from the comfort of your favorite corner in one of the retirement villages in Cape Town:

1. View the beauty of Cape Town from the top of Table Mountain
2. Visit Nelson Mandela’s prison cell on Robben Island
3. Watch rugby at Newlands and school rugby too
4. Visit all the wine farms, compare their excellence and rate them
5. Swim in both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean at least once a month
6. Visit art galleries and museums recurrently
7. Go and view both general and art movies
8. Visit The Castle
9. Visit Cape Point
10. Do whale watching during their annual visit to South African shores
11. View the awesome sharks from the safety of an underwater cage
12. Have breakfast, lunch and dinner at Franschoek’s restaurants
13. Work your way through Long Street’s variety of shops
14. Play golf on all the major golf courses around Cape Town
15. Visit Rhodes Memorial and take a book along for a quiet afternoon
16. Have tea in the Gardens and visit the National Museum
17. Attend public lectures at the University of Cape Town
18. Go and watch the ocean and people at sunset on Camps Bay beach
19. Hire a tour guide and do game watching, fauna and flora too
20. Spend time in the Botanical Gardens
21. Do flower watching on the West Coast at the end of winter
22. Go to Touws River and view the vines in autumn
23. Do the warm water baths of Caledon
24. Go and find the shy Disa in Bettys Bay Reserve
25. Do horse riding on the beach at Kommetjie
26. Go frequently to watch shows at Cape Town Theatre
27. Park at coffee shops in shopping centres watching people going by
28. Go on a wine tasting course in Paarl and Stellenbosch
29. Visit Langebaan on the West Coach for an authentic fish braai
30. Take a boat trip from Cape Town Waterfront
31. Go on all the hiking trails all around Cape Town
32. Do trout fishing or try catching the great Kabeljou
33. Visit all the quaint villages around the greater Cape Town area
34. Visit the San farm along the road to the West Coach
35. Take up an art or photography course
36. Take a boat at Hout Bay to view the seal colonies
37. Go for a helicopter drive around Table Mountain
38. Visit the aquarium in the Cape Town Waterfront
39. Go on a township tour
40. Do some river rafting
41. Do some sky diving
42. Watch the penguins at Boulders Beach
43. Book yourself in at a health spa
44. Get a personal trainer and become fit
45. Complete the Two Oceans race
46. Plan a few trips into the Sederberg Mountains, Klein and Groot Karoo
47. Attend the colourful New Year’s celebrations in Cape Town
48. Take a good book to the beaches at Clifton or Blouberg and get a tan
49. Do some deep sea fishing
50. Visit children at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital

From a base like Summervale Retirement Village, you can explore the full variety that little villages and seaside resorts offer to those who come to enlarge the scope of the human heart. Heart and soul, that is what the retired explorer will find when every new day offers more places that whisper their invitation to come visiting…

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Now is the time to give your imagination free reign. The retirement villages in South Africa offer lots of travel potential, but are also situated in settings ideal for some peaceful contemplation…

1. Read the morning paper slowly, sipping it like coffee
2. Allow the sun to touch your skin
3. Try pinpointing the turn of the seasons
4. Keep a diary noting the flow of life and rate your own effort
5. Phone your friends and visit them
6. Probe the deeper waters of their souls
7. Make new friends that leave you energized after engagements
8. Switch of the TV and switch on your imagination
9. Attend sport events, for the game and to watch spectators
10. Take your spouse and friends to the movies
11. Take your spouse and friends to the theatre
12. Make a list of books that must be read and reread
13. Do a course on photography
14. Go to art classes
15. Study for a degree in your field of interest
16. Write a book
17. Go on a wine-tasting course. The retirement villages in Cape Town are ideally situated for this
18. Go on a wine-making course
19. Make your own wine in your garage
20. Visit Franschoek or Knysna and stay over for a few days
21. Visit Prague, Istanbul, Venice and perhaps Paris too
22. Take a brisk walk every day
23. Become involved in activities inspired by kindness
24. Organize a weekly game of chess, poker or bridge
25. Swim in the ocean
26. Retirement villages in South Africa offer plenty of opportunities to taste the sea
27. Close your eyes to the stroking of the sea breeze
28. Visit the Kruger National Park and the Victoria Falls
29. Take your spouse or partner to watch the sunrise
30. Take your dog for a last swim before sunset
31. Join a stretching class
32. Buy yourself a very expensive bottle of wine, whiskey or a raincoat
33. Phone your grandchildren regularly
34. Listen to their stories and ask them questions
35. Listen carefully when they phone you
36. Stretch your mind, stretch theirs
37. Start a post retirement career
38. Ask your spouse to become your business partner
39. Engage in a meaningful hobby
40. Make a documentary for TV
41. Play golf until you succeed in getting a hole in one
42. Keep a little something for high blood pressure in both golfing pockets
43. Enter your home mimicking Clint Eastwood’s or Madonna’s walk, or Charlie Chaplin’s
44. Ignore your spouse’s look of admiration
45. Learn to interpret his/her laughter correctly or translate it to your liking
46. Become sensitive to the suffering of disadvantaged and abused people and open your hand and heart
47. Take a cake or doughnuts once a month to the police station or a children’s home
48. Sponsor a bright child at school or college
49. Make a list of classic movies to be watched again
50. Order them and start interchanging them with like-minded people
51. Find the strings of your soul
52. Tie them up in a synchronized bundle
53. Turn them to the world, let them loose and follow them
54. Park yourself in a coffee shop and watch the world go by
55. Eat a regular slice of chocolate cake or milk tart
56. Dress to the whisper of your imagination
57. Carry your imagination’s style in pride
58. Become lean and a mean assassin of excess fat
59. Join a book club with like minded people
60. Become an authority on the ways of whales and dolphins
61. Learn to apply humour when anger is expected
62. Don’t try humour on a politician or a boxer
63. Or a teenager
64. Or on your spouse after the Springboks have lost
65. Listen regularly to a variety of music
66. See whether the old timer can still rock
67. Acquire a taste for Beethoven, Mozart and Gogol Bordello
68. Don’t allow people to compare your age with the pyramids
69. If they do try, put on more lipstick or challenge them to arm wrestling
70. Remember to exercise with dumbbells in anticipation of a glorious moment
71. Buy yourself a very classy perfume or after shave
72. Put it on before you go to the library or ladies bar
73. Always remember that sensuality does not carry a sell by date
74. Write letters to newspapers, politicians and greedy businessmen
75. Fight the terrorists of societal values with reason and humane ethics
76. Read history and dissect its unfolding up to the present day
77. Become a guru on the lives of the world’s finest souls
78. Spend slow time in your garden or with your pot plants
79. Spend slow time with your spouse or partner
80. Surprise your spouse or partner with special gestures of love
81. Make your bed every morning and brush your shoes and teeth
82. Make a list of places still to be visited and tick them off when visited
83. Cherish time, be sensitive to days, hours and stroke every allotted minute
84. Don’t become a victim of your comfort zone, be a frontier fighter of the spirit
85. Make a study of indigenous trees and put it to book
86. Become fitter than you were five years ago
87. Swim in all the oceans of the world
88. Prepare gourmet food, drink good wine and repeat often
89. Take your spouse for the odd meal and ice cream at MacDonalds
90. Don’t repeat your mother or father’s stagnated rituals
91. Do repeat their admirable deeds and add value to them in their honour
92. Study your grandchildren’s development and coach them subtly
93. Carry the weight on your children’s shoulders with them, but don’t lend them money
94. Don’t vote for glib politicians or buy unethical companies’ shares
95. Don’t allow cruel people to have their days at other’s expense
96. Apply your graduation from an apprenticeship of life to the good of all still fighting their journey
97. Touch the sky and taste the rain
98. Smell the roses and listen to song of the ocean
99. Feel the warmth and curves of your spouse’s or partner’s hand
100. Walk around in harmony with the Soul of the Universe
101. Plan your personal list of a 101 things to do from your retirement village in South Africa

Your time in one of the retirement villages of South Africa can become a period of self-discovery and new interests. All that is required is an open mind and heart.

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Well, for a start one could ask the reciprocal question, where do people go for their holidays? They go where they can be near the ocean where swimming, walking and a relaxing lifestyle come naturally to all the senses. Why should they then not consider retiring somewhere along that same coastline at places like Gordons Bay and Stil Bay? Why not, indeed, when the retirement villages in South Africa offer so much in terms of active senior living?

What do people want when they choose a retirement village in Cape Town, South Africa? They want it to be near places that provide joy to their hearts, they want to be secure, to have sporting facilities like a gym, bowling greens and a swimming pool in the grounds. They want to have the surety of mind that health care facilities are top notch and that fully functioning hospitals are nearby.

There are quite a few Western Cape retirement villages that provide just that, both for South African residents and overseas visitors drawn to stay in this country. Summervale Lifestyle and Retirement Village in Gordons Bay, for one, comes to mind. One can enjoy an independent lifestyle in this secure village, and you can be on the beach, golf course or a variety of shopping centers within 10 minutes. World renowned hospitals are around, apart from the frail care facility that form part of the fully functioning retirement village.

But it is really all about the coastline. Retired people are relaxed and want to experience the exuberance that free days, weeks and years allow them. They have time to explore the quaint little towns on the Western Cape coastline whilst looking out for the whales that frequent the warm waters of the Indian Ocean for a few months every year. One can often find these beautiful creatures just outside the harbour area in Gordons Bay and many people park their cars along the mountainside and sit quietly waiting for the giants to surface. Imagine living in a retirement village in South Africa, just a few minutes from this magnificence.

It wasn’t long before people with time on their hands, many of them retired people, started to follow in the wake of these amazing animals from Gordons Bay to Betty’s Bay, and then to Hermanus. And sometimes they pack their bags and follow them to Stil Bay (if they are not already retired in that gem of a town) and on a contrarian journey towards False Bay in the Cape Town area.

There are so many cozy coffee shops and restaurants to fuel up at along the coastline and one can at any time just decide to turn inland to explore the beauty of Stellenbosch, Paarl, Swellendam, the Klein Karoo and the vastness of the Great Karoo.

And that is exactly the problem, that terrible feeling that you should have retired earlier in order to explore the unending beauty that a Cape Town retirement village lifestyle provides the young at heart in South Africa.

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The Western and Southern Cape are highly in demand as these areas offer not only beautiful mountains and breathtaking ocean views, but also a generally laid back and relaxed atmosphere. One can never be sure whether parents settle in the southern parts to be followed by their children or if it is the other way round, but extended families are clearly concentrated in abundance around these areas.

Another interesting development is the influx of people from abroad choosing retirement here. That has partly to do with the lifestyle they can create in this pleasant climate, but also with the fact that they can buy so much more with their dollars, euros and pounds when it comes to retirement villages in South Africa.

With their base in the Western and South Cape, retired people can travel to the Kruger National Park or deeper into Africa to watch the Victorian Falls or the stampede of herds of animals. But they tend to settle comfortably, thank you very much, in the variety that the southern African lifestyle provides. Summervale Lifestyle and Retirement Village in Gordons Bay is a good example of what a qualitative retirement can look like.

Whether one settles for a house near a beach or in one of a variety of new retirement villages in South Africa, satisfaction is guaranteed as retired people go out of their way to spread goodwill and companionship. They are furthermore satisfied that security is of good standard and that all the necessary medical facilities are there if needed.

In terms of supply and demand, the scale is on the side of droves of people over 55 flocking to the western and southern parts for retirement in South Africa’s coastal areas. This will continue for many years and will assure solid appreciation in this growing market.

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Retirement villages in South Africa or gated communities are specifically in demand in the western and southern parts of the country, as the beauty of the ocean and the laid back lifestyle in these parts attract people ready for an extended holiday!

Memories of previous holidays in the Western and Southern Cape remain alive in the minds of melancholy visitors all the way back home. The stretched out beaches, beautiful wine farms, trendy restaurants and great golf courses leave their mark and lure visitors back to settle permanently in South African gated retirement communities where the visiting whales can summon them to come watching life’s exuberance.

Whether one chooses to settle in Cape Town, Gordons Bay, Stil Bay, Paarl or Table View, the greatest draw back would be the availability of retirement property. Developers know that people on the way to retirement prefer to have peace, but that they want to participate fully in what society and nature can offer.

The right location for a retirement community is of paramount importance. Apart from solid security, efficient health care and aesthetic considerations, people retiring want to be near shopping centers, golf courses, movie theatres and a variety of other entertainment attractions. They therefore require their preferred retirement village in South Africa to be near all these amenities. Summervale Lifestyle and Retirement Village in Gordons Bay is a good example of what a qualitative retirement can look like.

There are furthermore specific gated retirement community requirements. At retirement most folks in the over 55 age bracket still prefer to buy a house where they can do some gardening and do outside entertainment. Later on when more health care is needed, they prefer to live in an apartment where the frail care facility is nearby. The other attraction of having a retirement apartment is that it leaves one free to go traveling without too many responsibilities back at the retirement village.

Facilities like a library, ladies bar, swimming pool, a bowling green and a dining room where one can spend time with other relaxed people, all add up to the excitement of buying into the lifestyle that retirement villages in South Africa offer.

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If you are a golfer to the bone, but do not like the idea of being a part owner of a few different golf properties, nor fractional title schemes, the solution could be to buy into one specific golf estate that you prefer and combine your property right with an organized rental system. You can utilize your golf estate property according to your own needs, but in becoming part of a trustworthy golf course community at various other golf estates all over the world in a interchanging rental system, your golfing experience could steadily spread in line with your golfing imagination!

In taking up this solution, your anguish, experienced when viewing the beautiful golf real estate all over the world, can turn into the knowing that you can play them all!

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Many of us started off in small towns and farms and this quiet unassuming life style lies engrained in the evolving human psyche. Even a good spread of hard core city dwellers have a family history where some great grandfather had to leave the family haven in order to make a living in the big cities of this world. Quite often the wilder spirits in rural areas would get restless and, just had to leave to experience first hand what was said or whispered about the great rush of city life. So, many of them went to the cities and stayed on. Assuring themselves and loved ones far away that the money was good, and that thus the future would therefore also be good. They settled in small capsules where the soul bounced easily from wall to wall, and remembered with aching hearts from time to time that out there, far away, was a place where your eyes could rest on far away hills, blazing blue oceans and soft green valleys. But, they assured themselves, the money is good and one day they will return home in comfort and settle once again to the familiar smells of the country air.

But life, said some else, is a bummer. You plan and you dream but too often the fight for survival drains the last inkling of remembrance of that thing pulsating in the core of your being. It can so easily kill the last vestige of that part of you that wants to stand proud in your own historical shoes.

The Garden Route in South Africa does not offer the glitz of the big cities. For that reason you will most likely not stumble into the film stars and international celebrities in places like Mossel Bay, Great Brak River or Heroldts Bay. For that you will have to do the walk at the street cafes of Camps Bay or frequent the night clubs of Cape Town. It offers the visitor exciting places and exhilarating experiences and it will leave you tired and happy at the end of every Cape Town holiday.

But it is not the Garden Route. A Garden Route tour beckons another side of human engaging. For a start, it will call up memories of long left family farms, small villages where you or grandfathers before you had those special moments and first glances that will haunt you for the rest of your life, or that have haunted those restless men fighting the tigers in the big cities. It is so personal and varied, those memories of bygone days, but trust me, the Garden Route will prod you in remembering the things that human beings are constituted off.

The very first thing that one experiences when entering the Garden Route is not the magnificent Indian Ocean, or the lush greenery, or the majestic mountains. The smell will hit you first and it will keep on following you for ever. Either by smelling it directly by being there, or in memory where ever or when ever your thoughts will turn towards that landscape.

I get very frustrated when I endeavor to describe the smell of the Garden Route, for what ever is stated, will do harm to direct existential exposure to it. All I will therefore do, is to list some of the organic ingredients and leave it up to you, the reader, to go and be captured by it. The peculiar shrubs, flowers, bushes and trees in its different variety right through the Garden Route of South Africa provide an earthy grounding to ‘the smell’. The Afrikaans speaking people has a word for some of those wonderful flora, they call it ‘fynbos’.

The scenery changes all the time when traveling guided by a Garden Route map. In the Mossel Bay area the climate is moderate and the landscape reflects that. In the Knysna area the climate is more humid with more rainfall and huge trees and thick forests are found there. One will have to compare the smell of the different areas in the Garden Route to what a wine connoisseur do when judging two bottles of solid red wine. The nose will be different and it will excite the senses in different ways, but a final choice is not to be made when it comes from the same stock. The intriguing smells of the Garden Route is like that. It differs, but together its peculiar smell is a very specific and exciting experience.

It might be very subjective but the huge waves building up in the deep ocean that come pounding against the cliffs at Heroldts Bay (Voëlklip area), have an effect that lasts in one’s mind for at least one life time! Most likely the developers of golf estates realized the effect of the Indian Ocean on viewers and quite a few golf courses, Pinnacle Point in Mossel Bay, Pezula in Knysna amongst others, have a location right on cliff tops, overlooking those huge swells of waters. It is not a strange sight to see golfers, and they are a strange breed, forgetting to play on, just staring at the breathtaking display of crushing waves or watching the whales or dolphins diving deep and surging high up into the air.

There are beautiful beaches from Stil Bay right through to Storms River and they are never as frantically crowded as the beaches on the main tourist tracks. That leaves space for all kinds of sport to be pursued. Scuba diving, wind sailing, surfing, fishing etc. It should be mentioned that you haven’t done body surfing before you have tried Victoria Bay at high tide.

One can choose where to go for an extended walk on the beach as the Garden Route provides many beaches that are clean and easily accessible.

To mention a few that will leave you tired but happy at the end of it: Stil Bay, Mossel Bay, Great Brak River, Wildernis, Glentana, Sedgefield, Buffels Bay, Plettenberg Bay, Nature’s Valley etc.

For a different kind of walk one can do a day walk or a four, five day walk in the forests of the Tsitsikamma. The Otter Trail is booked for a year in advance and many others too. Luckily there are so many places where one can park a car and enter those mystical forests to encounter ancient trees and huge ferns waving in the breeze. I have often watch tourists coming out of those woods, relaxed, slow moving and slow talking. Always the give away of real forest therapy!

There are various boat trips, from Knysna to Mossel Bay and apart from just tripping for the sake of watching the passing forest scenes or waves demolishing stark cliffs, one can also take a boat out to do some shark watching from a cage under water. Or go on a boat to measure your muscle power in angling against the big fish out there on the open waters.

The coffee shops, restaurants, antique shops, art galleries etc. are quaint and once again the style will suit the person who does not require high adrenalin injections but prefer slow qualitative surprises.

One need to really explore the Garden Route. A quick tour through South Africa will prevent you from a lasting experience that this southern cape coastal area offers. It might make sense to buy yourself a holiday home in the Garden Route - for example at the exclusive Avonddans Country Estate - share it with friends and family or to rent it out. If you don’t take time to explore thoroughly, the chances are good that the Cango Caves in Oudtshoorn, the vastness of the Klein and the Groot Karoo can be missed. It will be the tourist’s lost if the curving road through Meiringspoort that leads one into the Karoo, cradle of mankind, not be followed.

We have not said anything about the Knysna Loerie, the dark waters of the deep rivers, the velvet green of the Outeniqua Mountains or the hypnotizing Black Mountains, the lakes, the lagoons, the game reserves, the nature reserves, the steam locomotive trips, the moderate climate, the history of the area, the brilliant day breaks, the lazy sundowners at Kempton on Sea, strange little chapels, the elephants that hide away in the forests, the ostrich farms, the ghost ships sinking at the Knysna Heads, the Knysna sea horse, royal blood kinship, archeological finds, talented singers in small community hang outs. This is just a taste of what awaits you on a Garden Route South African tour.

The allure of South Africa’s Garden Route is not to be exhausted by words, it asks one to come visiting and experience its power directly. Buy your ticket and watch what will be happening to you when the plane door opens at George Airport or the bus makes a pit stop at Mossel Bay!

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