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.