When we started our trip planning for the Garden Route it really only revolved around hiking the Tsitsikamma Mountain Trail; a six day hike through the fynbos, mountains, and kloofs of the Tsitsikamma National Forest. We had done several multiday backpacking trips in Shenandoah National Park, so we knew what lie ahead and were so amped to stretch it beyond just a long weekend trip. This was going to be one of the highpoints in our trip. Backpacking for two days really requires about the same amount of stuff as 6 days. The only difference is food weight. The real issue was that we had to bring all of our South Africa supplies with us for the entire hike. This includes cameras, laptop, notebooks, a travel book, etc. All this, backpacking. We packed light, but not that light. After the first day or so of carrying all of our gear around in ZA we used our heads and said it wouldn’t be possible to hike the trail and we were probably going to hate life if we did. So we called it off.

We had six days that we needed to fill with activities along the Garden Route. We added a few days to Knysna, where we found the awesomely cozy Jembjo’s backpackers. In order to keep with our planned budget we were going to spend the rest of the time in the tent. We spent 4 days getting rained on in Plettenberg Bay and added a few days to our stay at Wild Spirits backpackers, where we also tented and got rained on for half of our five night stay. At the end we were so glad we didn’t use this time to hike the Tsitsikamma Mountain Trail. Instead we did a number of great day hikes and visited the Garden Route Animal Sanctuaries (Monkeyland, Birds of Eden, and Jukani) Each of these places gets animals that zoo’s don’t have room/money for or where irresponsible humans try to have these animals as pets and fails.

Even though we, and our gear, are quite wet and soggy after being rained on a majority of the last nine days we spent in our tent, we laugh about what it would have been like if we stuck to the original plan. Everything would have been much wetter and muddier, and the hike definitely would not have been as much fun as we had originally thought. We are en route to the ‘sunshine coast’ where we plan to surf our faces off in Jeffreys Bay. The forecast is looking a little better for the next five days and we can’t wait for an actual bed again!