The town of Plettenberg Bay lies almost on the border of the Western and Eastern Cape. Built on a hillside, most of the town is on a steep slope leading down to the sea, which means that regardless of where you find yourself accommodated, you will be treated to spectacular views of the bay and surrounding hills and mountains.
Across Africa are only a handful of sheltered, remote pockets of Afromontane forest; all that remains of huge tracts of ancient forest that covered large parts of the continent. On the Garden Route is one such forest. Knysna Forest, in some places so dense it borders on impenetrable, is a marvelous mix of ancient trees, both local and exotic. Tree ferns, creepers, flowers and the elusive Knysna loerie, its call heard more often than it is seen, are also part of the forest.
Indian Ocean, a body of salt water covering approximately one-fifth of the total ocean area of the world. It is the smallest, geologically youngest, and physically most complex of the world’s three major oceans. It stretches for more than 10,000 km between the southern tips of Africa and Australia and, without its marginal seas, has an area of about 73,440,000 square km. The Indian Ocean’s average depth is 3,960 meters, and its deepest point, in the Sunda Deep of the Java Trench off the southern coast of the island of Indonesia, is 7,450 meters.
