Plettenberg Bay was where we officially started the Garden Route part of our trip. We were sad to be done with safari, but excited about this new stage of our trip. The drive to Plettenberg Bay from Kariega Game Reserve was very enjoyable, especially when going through Tsitsikamma National Park. If you do this same drive and want to get something to eat, check out Die Walskipper in Jeffrey’s Bay.
Plettenberg Bay is a very nice town with lots of nice eateries, cafes and shops. Plett offers a great variety of outdoor activities to enjoy the gorgeous nature around it. Given that Plett is only a 45 minute drive to Tsitsikamma National Park, it makes for a great base to explore the park.
Where To Stay
We stayed in a very nice Airbnb in the heart of Plettenberg Bay. We loved that the space was very modern, and the location was super convenient to restaurants and shops. The apartment was also a 10 minute walk to a cute beach. This was the perfect place to rest after a day of exploring!
What To Do
There is so much to do in Plettenberg Bay and the surrounding area! The options for outdoor fun are endless. You could easily spend a week there hiking, kayaking, and exploring without ever getting bored! Because we only had a full day and a morning, we had to choose our favorite activities and go with them. Here’s what our family did during our stay in Plettenberg Bay:
Tsitsikamma National Park
Tsitsikamma National Park was at the top of our list when we started planning our Garden Route drive. The scenery looked stunning! We wanted to hike the suspension bridges at Storms River Mouth, so that was our first stop of the day. We arrived there close to 9:30am and had no trouble finding a parking spot in the main lot. By the time we left around noon, the lot was full, and cars were parked a long ways down the road.
Hiking to the hanging bridges was super fun! The trail is made up of boardwalks, and you hike with beautiful views all the way to the bridges. Keep an eye out for Rock Dassies. There’s one spot where they all seem to congregate right next to the trail!
We loved walking on the three bridges! The kids had a blast running and stomping on them. The views of the gorge were fantastic! After crossing the bridges we spent some time on the little beach overlooking the other side of the gorge and playing with rocks. This is a lovely place to enjoy a snack before going back to the park headquarters.
After grabbing a very tasty lunch at the restaurant by the parking lot, we hiked the Lourie Trail (1km). This shorter version of the Dieker Trail loops through the ancient indigenous forest up to a lookup point and down past a nice creek. Once you complete the trail, you hike back to your car on the road. The trail is listed as easy, but we would say it’s moderate as the first half is completely uphill on somewhat uneven terrain.
After a quick stop at the gift shop for celebratory popsicles, we got back on the car to drive to our next stop. We decided to skip the Big Tree stop because we had limited time and, being from California, we have already seen the biggest trees on the planet.
Important: When you enter the park you pay an entrance fee. Make sure to save your payment receipt as they will ask to see it when you leave the park.
Bloukrans Bridge Bungy Jumping
The Bloukrans Bungy is one of the world’s highest bungy jumping places at 216 meters above the Bloukrans River. The bridge is located on the N2 highway at the border between the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape of South Africa. A cool fact is that to reach the lower level of the bridge, from where you jump, you need to zip-line there!
We didn’t have any intention or desire to jump from the bridge, but we were very interested in seeing others do it! Fortunately, there’s a nice viewing spot to watch others jump from the bridge. The onsite cafe and restaurant have a nice deck for people to enjoy a drink while waiting for the bungy jumpers to take the leap.
Our family really enjoyed watching people zip-line to the bridge, and then jump from it! It was thrilling to hear the screams of excitement as people jumped! Definitely a cool experience, and a good way to show the kids something totally new and extreme!
Lawnwood Snake Sanctuary
We saw signs for this sanctuary while driving to Tsitsikamma from Plettenberg Bay, and immediately looked it up because our kids LOVE snakes! As it turns out, Joe had flagged this spot on our maps during the initial stages of our South Africa research. So, after we saw a couple of people jump from Bloukrans Bridge, we drove 20 minutes down the road to Lawnwood Snake Sanctuary.
Lawnwood Snake Sanctuary was a big hit with our family! The guided visit through the sanctuary takes about one hour. We stayed longer than an hour because the place was just so fun. There was even a tire swing for the kids to play with! Our guide was super informative and very friendly! He let the kids hold a couple of snakes, and at the end he brought out a giant reticulated python for all of us to hold. This was my first time holding a snake and I have to say it wasn’t too bad!
If your children (or you) are as fascinated by snakes as mine are, Lawnwood Snake Sanctuary is a must stop along the Garden Route! They had snakes our kids had been wanting to see forever, like a Black Mamba and a Boomslang. It also felt like an actual sanctuary, and not just a tourist attraction, which was very nice.
Robberg Nature Reserve
This nature reserve was at the top of my list for what I wanted to see on the Garden Route! After Joe showed me photos of the hike to The Point in Robberg Nature Reserve, I knew I wanted to do it! The hike on a narrow peninsula looked stunning in photos, and it was even more striking in real life! Here are the details:
There is a small entrance fee to enter the reserve. We paid less than $15 for our family of four. We arrived at 9am and the parking lot was almost full. This was surprising because we were there on a Monday morning. I would recommend you arrive early if you are planning on doing this hike, not just to snatch a parking spot, but also to get hiking before the hottest time of the day.
There are three different loops of increasing distance and difficulty you can do. The first one is a 2km walk to the Gap and back to the car park. The second one (which is the one we did) is a 4km walk to the Witsand sand dune and down to The Island and back. The roundtrip loop via The Point is 11km and takes about four hours or more. This last one is not recommended for young children because it can be difficult to follow or dangerous if you steer away from the trail.
We felt like the 4km option gave us a great taste of what the Reserve had to offer. The scenery was stunningly beautiful all around. The trail was very dynamic and it kept our children super engaged by having to climb stairs, skip of rocks, use ropes to prop themselves up, etc. A highlight for our kids was running up and down Witsand sand dune by the Island. It was super fun for them, even though they’d been hiking for a couple of hours at that point.
We had packed swimsuits so we stopped at the beach by The Gap to take a dip and cool off after the hike. The water was cold, but it was super fun to do it! Another great place to take a dip in the Indian Ocean is by The Island. There you’ll find two beaches that looked great for a quick dip!
After finishing our hike in Robberg Nature Reserve, we headed to town for lunch and coffee before starting our drive to Oudtshoorn.
Where To Eat
Finding food in Plettenberg Bay is super easy. There are some commercial streets lined with restaurants and coffee shops, as well as gift shops and bookstores. These are a couple of places we ate at:
Sotto Restaurant and Lounge. This mediterranean inspired restaurant was located just below our Airbnb, making it a super convenient place to eat dinner after a full day of exploring. They had a kids’ menu, and their kids’ gyros were as big as the adult ones. We enjoyed their wide selection of non-alcoholic cocktails too.
The Smoothie Bar. We stopped here on our way out of Plettenberg Bay to get a “snack” for the road. The owner was super friendly, and the smoothies and juices we got were delicious! I was shocked by how inexpensive they were compared to prices back in SF and even Lisbon!
Nineteen 89. This was a fun place to get lunch on the main drag in Plettenberg Bay. Food was tasty, and the view of the bay was beautiful. I wouldn’t recommend getting coffee there though. We ordered one after lunch but it tasted like anything but coffee! It was surprising, considering the food was very good.
Final Thoughts
We really enjoyed our 2-night stay in Plettenberg Bay! The nature around it was great for outdoor-loving people like us. We wondered if we should’ve split the two nights between Plett and Tsitsikamma, but at the end we were happy to have settled into one place for a couple of days. Overall, a wonderful stay on South Africa’s Garden Route!
To read more about our 2-week trip to South Africa, check out this post. To explore different destinations, visit our Places page.
