Storms River

Storms River Village sits in the heart of the Tsitsikamma forest region, in Koukamma Local Municipality, Sarah Baartman District. The village was surveyed by pass builder Thomas Bain in 1879, after he charted the gorge route through the Storms River valley. It was declared a crown village in 1885. The Duthie family of Knysna had a hunting lodge here in the mid-1800s, which eventually became what is now the Tsitsikamma Village Inn, still operating on the same site. The village has never grown large. It is a handful of streets, a police station, a supermarket, a liquor store, a few restaurants, and a lot of accommodation. The forest is right there.

The Tsitsikamma National Park, accessed a few kilometres south at Storms River Mouth, is what most visitors come for. The Otter Trail begins here, one of South Africa's great five-day coastal hikes, moving east along a coastline of cliffs, rivers, and fynbos. For a shorter commitment, the walk to the suspension bridge over the Storms River gorge and the three marked trails in the park cover the essentials: ancient yellowwood forest, dramatic river scenery, and the Big Tree, a yellowwood estimated at around 1,000 years old, 36.6 metres high and nine metres in circumference.

The Bloukrans Bridge is 8km west of the village. At 216 metres, the bungee jump from the arch is the highest commercial bungee operation in the world. Whether you jump or just watch from the bridge walkway, it is a genuinely impressive piece of infrastructure in an extraordinary setting. Stormsriver Adventures operates zip-lines and blackwater tubing through the gorge. These are serious activities, not theme park rides.

The village itself is functional and compact. It doesn't have the fussiness of some Garden Route towns. It's a base camp dressed up as a village. The forest around it is real, indigenous, ancient, and extraordinarily quiet when the tour buses have gone.