Elephants and other invitees

ONE of the things to do in South Africa is to tour the Garden Route

ONE of the things to do in South Africa is to tour the Garden Route. It's not a horticultural tour or anything, just the promise of tots of flowers and scenery as you go up the bottom right hand bit towards Durban.

Well, that should be easy enough, you'd say... maybe we could drive to Durban or Port Elizabeth anyway and take in a few flowers and bit of scenery on the way?

Then you get out the map and look at the distances. And feel dizzy.

The only bit of the Garden Route that looked at all possible was a place called Knysna and that was 500 kilometres away. People talked airily about it being a five and a half hour journey, six at the very most. But then there are people at home who talk like that about going to West Cork.

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There's a great book called The Portfolio, which lists guest houses and places that might have about six rooms and a pool, and there was one in Knysna which said it had a wrap around verandah: people book places for strange reasons, but I loved the sound of that. It seemed to be waiting to tuck us all in with views and basket chairs and sundowners.

So off we went on the N2, a mere 500 kms to go, in the bright sunshine.

The first thing to notice was that there was no traffic whatsoever. I don't just mean the traffic was light, as Conor Faughnan and his team say about once a year. The traffic was non existent. You get that kind of feeling that everyone might have gone to the moon, or that this huge highway wasn't actually finished or open yet, and that might drive off the end of it into space.

No trucks, no other tourists, I nearly died of happiness when I saw a Toyota lorry and waved at it excitedly and a bit later we were overtaken by a family doing what must have been a 110 miles an hour, and yet you'd have to forgive them since there wasn't another vehicle for miles and the road was dead straight.

For the first bit you'd pass huge, empty looking tracts of land. I have no idea what it was national park? Huge estate? Common land? Then there were forests dotted around it, ones that looked fairly ornamental. There were no farmhouses, or big houses or cottages. It was a mystery, a huge yellow and green mystery. Then you'd come across fields full of ostriches looking bewildered, but didn't we all?

Then there were mountains and valleys and rivers, and still hardly a car on the road and small, mysterious towns with 20 filling stations and installations that looked exactly like the Charleville Cheese factory, and 15 banks and 10 estate agents. And it was hypnotic in a way, with perfect sign posting and sometimes a group of black children walking cheerfully along, at least five miles from anywhere there was habitation and at least five miles away from the next place.

And then the valleys were lusher and the almighty iris type flowers bigger, and hibiscus thick and tumbling over walls. And signs for Knysna appeared, indicating it was high time we learned how to pronounce it. (It's like Nice Nah, in case you go there and don't want to make fools of yourselves: I believe travellers have a duty to pass on such information).

It was the most gorgeous little place you ever saw, a dream lagoon which meant peaceful water and two great cliffs called the Heds leading out to the Indian Ocean.

There were restaurants, and grocery shops and art galleries, places selling objects made out of Stinkwood, oyster beds where you could sit and eat oysters and watch the world go by. This was a real resort, a bucket and spade holiday place with miles of empty sand, in places like Brenton on Sea, and Plettenburg Bay. The hills had been scooped out to make second homes for those who live in Johannesburg most of the year but come here for five weeks in summer. There's time share and boat hire, bungee jumping and steam trains which chug through the mountains. You wouldn't need to be a psychic to watch this spot become the centre of a holiday empire in 10 years' time.

AND as always in a small hotel, it was easy to get into the lives of all the other guests and hard to get out. There was a couple who spoke to each other as if they had met that day but apparently had been married for 15 years. He was elderly and inquired whether she had ever been in America, which you'd think is something that might have come up over the last decade and a half. She was well groomed and not elderly and asked him whether he liked classical music. Yet they claimed to live in Switzerland and to have travelled the world together.

And there were the four good natured Germans who had rented a minibus so they would have room to stretch their limbs and not crush their garments. They played golf in impeccable sportswear, they spoke highly of the dry cleaning around South Africa, they shook hands with everyone and went into the kitchen to congratulate the chef each night. They were two married couples who lived near each other at home and had dinner together every Saturday night, and spent five weeks touring to avoid the winter.

They had only one argument in 20 years, but it was almost forgotten now, they said cheerfully.

And there was the woman who told us her daughter had married a crook but then lots of people did, so what the hell.

Where are they all tonight? What people sit on the wrap around verandah telling tales and driving us all mad with their lifestyles?

TWICE we passed a place called Knysna Elephant Park, but I didn't go in looking for them because I thought that it might just be the name of the place, like a pub could be called The Bear Pit, and no one except an eejit would think there were real bears in it. But I was wrong. There were elephants there and we just passed it by.

It began as an experiment: apparently two young females that had been brought in specially to mate with the known, but seldom seen, elephant that had been living there for years, sad and wifeless.

The two youngsters brought down from the Kruger with the aim of establishing a dynasty were less than successful. First it turned out that the resident elephant was so seldom seen people hadn't realised that it was a female, and there was no mating. Then the two that had come from the Kruger had thought the orange orchards were their dinner and had torn them up cheerfully.

So that Was it for the Knysna Two. This week the decision was made. It was back to the game reserve, the Shamwari near Port Elizabeth, where there are already 30 elephants and the facilities for them. No more pretending that this garden suburb is suited to jumbos. Antique shops, restaurants, a new marina? Now you're talking. But elephants? Forget it.