Please find the overview of my Garden Route trip here.
This was the last day of the tour, and after the action-packed previous days we were glad to have a slow morning. The original tour schedule included a canoe trip on the second day, but which was cancelled in our case due to bad weather. This day the sun was shining though, so we did the canoe trip when we passed through Wilderness again on the return journey instead.
We divided the group into pairs to man the canoes and set off along the gentle Touw River. The canoe trip through the Wilderness National Park took about 30 to 40 minutes, after which we moored the canoes on a small strip of the river bank that was made accessible. From there we proceeded on foot and had an easy walk for another half an hour until we arrived at two small waterfalls. We took a rest on the rocks next to the waterfalls, but after some of the more audacious members of our group, myself included, had shown that the water was chilly yet quite pleasant, soon all of us were splashing around underneath the waterfalls. We verified that some parts of the pool had a bit more depth and a few of us dared jumping down from the rocks into the pool, while the other people were enjoying the warm rays of the sun.
We could not stay overly long though, as we had to cover a significant distance to get back to Cape Town. After the return canoe trip we stopped in Mossel Bay, where we had lunch at a brilliant ocean-front braai restaurant. The meat lovers rejoiced when being served the ‘meatbasket’ dish, which, true to its name, was a basket packed with delicious barbecued meat. We made another quick stop at an aloe factory where we were given a short demonstration on how the aloe sap is extracted. After that it was a long stretch back to Cape Town, which allowed me to enjoy a reread of one of my all-time favorite books. After stops at various hostels in the Cape Town city center I was the last one to be dropped off in the suburbs.
This concluded my intense and amazing trip of the Garden Route, filled with phenomenally beautiful nature, thrilling activities, and unique experiences.