George, founded in 1811, is the largest town on the Garden Route yet remains little more than a commercial center and transport hub. It has some attractive old buildings, including the tiny St Mark’s Cathedral and the more imposing Dutch Reformed Mother Church, but it’s 8km from the coast and for most visitors its chief draw is the range of championship golf courses.

With gnarly surf spots, some fine beaches, a menu of outdoor activities that covers everything from coastal hikes to leaping out of a plane, and a solid range of places to stay for every budget, Mossel Bay is an excellent destination for the independent traveler. At first glance, the town is the ugly sister of the Garden Route. It was a hugely popular destination until the 1980s, when the building of the world’s largest gas-to-oil refinery and concomitant industrial sprawl marred it, and it fell into a slump. But if you can see beyond the unimpressive approach road, you’ll find a cheery town with plenty of sunny-day pursuits. Much of the holiday action happens around the Point, a promontory with an old-school seaside vibe. There are ice-cream kiosks, a caravan park and minigolf, and it's also a prime spot to surf.

The name says it all: dense old-growth forests and steep hills run down to a beautiful stretch of coastline of rolling breakers, kilometers of white sand, bird-rich estuaries and sheltered lagoons. All this has made Wilderness very popular, but thankfully it doesn’t show – the myriad holiday homes blend into the verdant green hills, and the town center is compact and unobtrusive. Beach bums beware: the beach here is beautiful, but a strong rip tide means swimming is not advised. The only other drawback is that everything is quite widely scattered, making life difficult if you don’t have a vehicle.