Having been in Knysna for almost a week now, we are starting to feel our remaining time in South Africa slip by too quickly. Since getting here we’ve been recovering after getting sick thanks to patient zero exposing everyone on our flight here. In the process of getting well, we have lost nearly a week of our month-long stay. Today we wanted to start taking full advantage of our surroundings, so we took a day trip to Wilderness South Africa.

The agenda for the day included kayaking to a hidden waterfall, viewing the Map of Africa viewpoint, walking on the Wilderness Beach, and then eating lunch somewhere in between.

The Drive

This is our third outing with the rental car when you include the initial drive to Knysna from the George airport (GRJ), and our local outing to the Knysna Heads and Coney Glen Beach. Driving is starting to feel much more natural now as my brain adjusts to the left side of the road and the right side of the car. I felt much more in control today.

The drive took 45 minutes and our first stop was the Kayaking place. When we reached the parking turnoff it was unclear whether the parking lot still existed or if we could even access it. There was a major road construction project going on and we saw nothing but construction vehicles and equipment. We drove past, and then circled back and decided to just try turning in. There was an opening through all of the construction stuff, allowing us to go back to the kayak place. This may have worked in our favor, reducing the number of people at the kayak place.

Kayaking

We went to an outfit called Kaaimans Adventures, and after filling out a form and paying, we were given life jackets and two double seat kayaks. BC and I took one, and JC and AC took the other.

They told us there were two forks available in the river. One leads to a hidden waterfall, and the other to a sandy beach. The hour long rental was just long enough to do both.

The path to the hidden waterfall takes you through a small canyon to get to the waterfall. The waterfall was very pretty and peaceful. I would have been happy spending our whole hour back there in hindsight. After the initial group of people in front of us quickly left, we had the whole box canyon and waterfall to ourselves.

After the waterfall, we took the alternate fork to the beach. That fork was more open, and puts you next to the road and construction, so it was far less peaceful. The beach was pretty unremarkable as well.

Map of Africa

Our next stop was the Map of Africa viewpoint, which is only 500 meters as the crow flies from the kayaking, but took a 7.7km drive to get there. This was an underwhelming attraction. It does sort of look like Africa, but so do some clouds. It requires a bit of pareidolia, and the illusion fades quickly if you pull up an actual map of Africa.

There was an older lady sitting at the viewpoint providing a guide narration, explaining about the land that the Map of Africa was on among other things. I don’t know if she was official in any capacity, but we tipped her 50R. If we tip unofficial parking attendants 10-20R for doing nothing, I figured she deserved more.

However, not all was wasted on the 7.7km drive. The guide lady told us to make a short walk in the other direction, where there was an amazing 18km of unobstructed coastal view from a high point on a hillside. It was really incredible and should have been the headliner of that site.

Wilderness Beach

Our final stop was Wilderness beach, and the first order of business was eating lunch. It was already 1pm and we knew there was a restaurant called Salinas Beach Restaurant right by the entrance to the beach. The restaurant was perched on the top floor of a building, providing views of the shore. We sat outside and the weather was perfect. This is the first location of the year where the outdoor conditions are just right for being outside a lot. The food was really good; BC and I both had fish and chips.

After lunch we walked on the beach, which is very wild, raw, and untamed. It was unlike any beach I’ve ever seen. I think it’s the combination of how vast and unobstructed it is, how unmanicured yet naturally beautiful it is, and how fisherman far outnumber typical beachgoers. It feels like going back in time before an amazing beach was exploited for commercial tourism purposes, maybe like California in the 1930s.