Hoekwil

Hoekwil sits above the Garden Route on a plateau, reached via the Hoekwil Pass from Wilderness or from the N9 inland. The name means corner or angle in Afrikaans, describing the way the Touws River bends below the escarpment. The village is set in the crook of that bend, surrounded by indigenous forest, farmland, and the mountain slopes of the Outeniqua range rising behind it.

The view from the pass is the first thing most visitors notice. Coming up from Wilderness, the blue of the Indian Ocean and the coastal lakes of the Wilderness National Park appear below, then the valley fills in around you as you climb. The village itself is quiet — a farming community with a few smallholdings, a coffee shop, and a craft brewery that operates along the Hoekwil Hoopla Arts Route.

The Big Tree, a yellowwood estimated at 850 years old, is in the forest near the village and is the kind of thing that makes you recalibrate your sense of time. Yellowwoods are South Africa's national tree and the old specimens in these Outeniqua forests are among the largest living organisms in the country.

The Hoekwil Hoopla Arts Route is a 30-kilometre circular drive that starts in Wilderness, climbs through Hoekwil, loops through the farming country at the mountain's foot, and returns through the lakes district. Coffee shops, craft brewers, farm markets, and studios are spaced along it. It is the kind of route you do slowly on a winter Saturday when the coast is grey.