COASTAL ROUTE NORTH R27 - THE CAPE WEST COAST EXPERIENCE

The road takes you through the Cape Town suburbs of Milnerton and Bloubergstrand (Try Café Blouberg for an excellent breakfast). It´s from here that all photographers love to snap that famous picture of Table Mountain rising above the sparkling waters of Table Bay. Turn right onto the R307 for a short inland detour via the town of Atlantis and the old Mamre Mission Station to Darling, (45 min. home to a unique cabaret dame, Evita Bezuidenhout - a show is a must) which lies within the West Coast Biosphere Reserve and boasts some of the region's best flower-watching.

The whole of the West Coast comes alive with flowers in spring (August to October) and you really shouldn't miss the show. It's one of the world's great natural phenomena. Return to the coast along the R315 and visit the resort town of Yzerfontein for water sports, year-round birding and, in late winter and early summer, exceptional whale watching. Follow the R27 again and turn off to the West Coast National Park, which protects large areas of the richest estuary in South Africa - the Langebaan Lagoon. A little further and you'll come to the resort town of Langebaan itself.

Time it right & you can eat on the beach at the famous Strandloper restaurant: seafood their speciality, of course! Saldanha lies at the southern end of a massive peninsula, & within thirty kilometers of the town you'll find some of South Africa's most celebrated fishing villages: Jacobsbaai, Paternoster, St Helena Bay and Stompneus Bay - all of which have become must-see destinations for any visitor to the West Coast. They're also popular destinations for whale watching and birding.

Back on the R27 & traveling northwards again, your next destinations are Velddrif - with its deep water marina - and Laaiplek, where ornithologists have recorded more than 200 different species of birds. From here take the road via the artists colony of Aurora and the village of Redelinghuys, from where you'll turn left on the R366 to Elandsbaai.

Now the road turns inland via Leipoldtville & returns to the coast again at the resort town of Lamberts Bay - which is famous for its seafood feasts and for Bird Island, where you can watch thousands of yellow-faced, blue-eyed Cape Gannets from a specially constructed hide. And all along the way you'll have met wonderfully hospitable people, seen nature at its most fascinating and reveled in the wild, rugged African ness of the Cape's West Coast. You could return to Cape Town along the N7 - the Inland Route via Piketberg, Mooreesburg and Malmesbury.