Cape to Addo Safari: 5-Day Garden Route Adventure from Cape Town to Addo Elephant National Park

The bus eases out of Cape Town before dawn, headlights slicing the coastal mist as the city recedes and the Atlantic folds into a long, blue horizon. By late morning the road climbs the R44, cliffs and kelp-fed seas sliding past the windows, and the first chapter of the Garden Route unfurls — whale-watched bays, aromatic fynbos, and the sudden green cleft of the Outeniqua foothills. Over five days the itinerary stitches together a handful of South Africa's most elemental landscapes: the southernmost tip at Cape Agulhas, canoe-fed rivers in Wilderness, the ancient forests and swing bridges of Tsitsikamma, the surf town streets of Jeffreys Bay, and finally the wide, thorn-scrub plains of Addo where elephants concentrate in memorable numbers.