South Africa’s answer to Route 66 is an epic coast-to-coast adventure
n the tasting room of the Graham Beck estate, on the outskirts of South Africa’s Route 62, I savoured the zesty lime freshness of a champagne-style sparkling wine that was served at both Nelson Mandela’s inauguration and Barack Obama’s presidential win.
It was the perfect toast to my journey along Route 62, renowned as the world’s longest wine route, and often ranked as one of the greatest road trips on earth.
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Stretching 850 km from Cape Town to Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), Route 62 was constructed in 1851 to export farm produce, before being developed as a marketing idea inspired by America’s Route 66, which stretches from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Both roads travel from the west to the east coast of their respective countries, and both link port cities. But that is where the similarities end. Route 62 is said to be less crowded and expensive than the Cape’s coastal locations, and, unlike the near-defunct Route 66, South Africa’s Route 62 is thriving.
Roads wind through the mountains along Route 62, which extends from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth – Getty
A new route from Norse Atlantic Airways (flynorse.com) launched from London Gatwick to Cape Town in October this year, making the Western Cape more accessible than ever. Now is the time to visit.
“Route 62 is a rare win-win situation,” said flat-cap-sporting P-J Basson, owner of the Montagu Country Hotel (www.montagucountryhotel.co.za; from £120 per person, including breakfast) who drove me past Montagu’s whitewashed, ornately gabled Cape Dutch houses in his bubblegum blue 1956 Cadillac Sedan deVille part way through my trip.
“Tourists enjoy an exceptional drive through spectacular scenery and contribute to communities that would otherwise languish in poverty.”
South Africa’s Route 62 stretches across the Western and Eastern Capes – Getty
From Montagu, I drove on smooth tar roads to the town of Ladismith, where I detoured to the UNESCO-listed Seweweekspoort mountain pass. The 12-kilometre gravel road follows the river’s serpentine path, offering sudden scenery switch-ups at every turn.
At times, rocks reflected sunlight like flames, while moments later I was engulfed in shadow.
In Oudtshoorn, the La Plume hotel (www.laplume.co.za; from £120 per person, including breakfast), built during the ostrich feather boom in South Africa, when feathers were worth their weight in gold, offers an expansive sunrise view from the veranda overlooking a lush green plain encircled by mountains, where ostriches roam freely.
Ostriches roam freely at the La Plume hotel in Oudtshoorn – Getty
If you only have time to explore a segment of the route, travel from Oudtshoorn through the scenic Robinson Pass (R328) to Mossel Bay, then return to Cape Town via the less scenic but faster N2. Bed down at the charming Eight Bells in the Outeniqua Mountains (eightbells.co.za; rooms from £51.09 per night, including breakfast).
Mossel Bay isn’t technically on Route 62, but is worth the detour to visit nearby Botlierskop Game Reserve to go whale watching from July to October, and to visit the caves at Pinnacle Point, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2024.
Mossel Bay is known for wide, sandy Santos Beach – Alamy
At Botlierskop Game Reserve (botlierskop.co.za; Tented, Village Lodges and Bush Villas from £411.20 per night, including breakfast and a game drive), I rode through rugged mountain terrain with a herd of well-trained horses, pinching myself as I passed artistically patterned oryx, a herd of prized black impala and a rhino that grazed no more than ten feet away from me
The next day, I went out on the water with Mossel Bay Boat Adventures (mosselbayboatadventures.co.za; from £61.65 per trip) and drifted so close to a pod of Southern Rights that I heard the soft “pssft” of their exhalations.
Bartolomeu Dias was the first European to set foot in South Africa when he landed at Mossel Bay on February 3, 1488. I contemplated this feat at the Mossel Bay Museum (diasmuseum.co.za), where the world’s only life-size replica of the caravel that he sailed in from Portugal is squeezed inside the building like a ship in a bottle.
The 19th century Cape St Blaize Lighthouse in Mossel Bay – Alamy
“Welcome back home!” our guide Christopher Jantjies said as we reached the gaping entrance to the Pinnacle Point Cave. It was thought that modern human behaviour first appeared in Europe and Asia about 50,000 years ago; but the thin edge of the stone that I caressed with my fingers, crafted using heat-treated rock from a fire possibly built in this very cave, and other exceptionally preserved fossils, indicate that intelligent humans lived here 160,000 years ago.
As well as fashioning tools from fire-heated rocks, these modern humans used red ochre, probably to adorn their bodies and cave walls, harvested seafood and hunted game.
I rejoined Route 62 in Oudtshoorn and drove through the Langkloof valley. When I arrived in the Eastern Cape, the air became balmier and the roads bumpier. After a four-hour drive through rolling hills, the Radisson Blu Hotel (radissonhotels.com; from £100 per person, including breakfast) offered a comfortable stopover in Gqeberha, with a view of the promenade and the plumbago-blue Indian Ocean.
The roads offer beautiful views of South African landscapes – Getty
With its difficult-to-master Xhosa clicks, Gqeberha, renamed in 2021, didn’t roll easily off my tongue. “We just say QE instead of PE,” confessed former resident Cheslin Trompeter. The name change indicates a city shrugging off its colonial associations. Gqeberha has fascinating layers of history.
On its surface, the image of Mandela, a revered icon, is replicated throughout the city. Even the campanile at the harbour, completed in 1922 to commemorate the 4,000 British settlers who landed in Algoa Bay in 1820, now features a silver plaque dedicated to Mandela, added on step 67. This plaque marks the start of Route 67, a walking tour celebrating Mandela’s contributions to democracy.
In St. George’s Park, home to the oldest bowling green in South Africa, the beautiful 1882 Victorian conservatory built to cultivate exotic plants, water lilies and beautiful orchids is marred by broken windows and stolen brass latches, but is being restored.
St George’s Park cricket ground in Port Elizabeth – Alamy
The newly replanted, light-filled space now hums with chlorophyll and is ready, once again, to offer an elegant sanctuary in the heart of the city.
I walked the wave-pounded coastline along the 3.5-mile Sacramento Trail loop and felt the fear of the 72 survivors of the Portuguese galleon Sacramento, which ran aground on June 30, 1647. At Cape Recife, I climbed the renovated lighthouse and studied the unbroken expanse of the gleaming but treacherous ocean.
Cape Recife Nature Reserve in Algoa Bay in Port Elizabeth is revered as one of the best nature reserves in Africa to spot bird and marine life – Alamy
Leaving Gqeberha to return to Cape Town, the Garden Route Game Lodge (grgamelodge.co.za; lodges from £143.68 per night, including breakfast and a game drive) provided an affordable mid-point safari stopover. During the morning game drive, I saw abundant game, including a dazzle of zebras, a gang of buffalo, a lion mating, and a cheetah guarding her three cubs.
As I sipped my glass of Graham Beck fizz and gazed out at the lush green landscape with mountains in every which direction, time felt like an elastic concept. On this kaleidoscopically varied and history-rich journey, I’d revisited a time when we wore ostrich feathers in our hats, settled on unknown continents, and sailed uncharted oceans. Time stretched to the limits of my comprehension when I connected with our human origins in a cave inhabited by our ancestors 160,000 years ago.
Route 62 made me realise that something in our DNA craves intimate contact with nature — to sleep in velvety silence, wake at sunrise and scan our eyes across open plains; see game roam freely; hear the sound of a whale’s breath and take deep long breath of one’s own.