Wilderness Manor

Wilderness Manor sits on Waterside Road with the lagoon directly across the street. Cross to the boardwalk and you are on foot to the beach, the village restaurants, and the shops — no car needed for any of it. George Airport is twenty-five kilometres away, and the property arranges airport transfers on request.

The house has four en-suite rooms. Three are on the second floor facing the lagoon: two have balconies and four-poster or standard king beds, one opens through large windows without a balcony. The fourth room is downstairs, set into the garden level with its own patio and planted outdoor space, but no lagoon view. All four have a separate bath and shower, double hand basins, heated towel rails, a mini-bar fridge, in-room safe, and cotton linen. King beds in every room convert to twins. Breakfast — a continental buffet and a cooked English option — is served in the breakfast room, which opens onto a balcony above the indigenous forest garden; Knysna loeries come to feed there.

The two shared lounges, one a reading room, both have balcony views over the lagoon. The interior runs to oriental rugs, antiques, and art.

Wilderness is well placed for the central Garden Route: Knysna is forty-three kilometres east, Mossel Bay seventy-two kilometres west, and Oudtshoorn sixty-nine kilometres north over the Outeniqua Mountains. The Touw River, which reaches the sea through the lagoon, is canoeable from the village.