If you are looking for adventure, excitement and an adrenaline filled activity, then Knysna Ziplines is definitely for you.

Bryan and I decided that a great way to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary would be by treating ourselves to an adventure with Knysna Ziplines.

I had previously enjoyed one of the Canopy Tour Ziplining adventures in the Drakensberg and had loved it and Bryan just loves any adrenaline adventure (he is trying to persuade me to do the Bloukrans Bridge Bungee in the Tsitsikamma section of the Garden Route National Park!).

So we booked our adventure and one Monday morning in October 2023, and headed to Harkerville (between Knysna and Plettenberg Bay).

 

We checked in at the Knysna Zipline office next to the Sasol Garage in Harkerville and signed our lives away on their indemnity form.

When then drove through the Harkerville Forest towards the Kranshoek View point and found the zip-lining station all ready to get us geared up in to our harness, gloves helmet and pulley connector.

The guys at the gearing up station were great. Very friendly and professional and good fun. Their sense of humour matched the excitement we were feeling for this experience.

We were now ready for the fun to begin and I have to say, you could not choose a more spectacular location to be soaring over the trees and across the Kranshoek Gorge! Wow!

Admittedly, it is not the sexiest of looks for a wedding anniversary, but I would rather be safe then look good, when enjoying one of these sorts of activities!

We had booked to do the first four zip-lines. These four are at heights of +- 200m and include some extremely long cables. The longest one was just under 700 metres long.

We headed off with our guide, Nigel and our Safety Guide, Steven and walked to the first platform. Here they gave us a thorough safety briefing, explaining how we should have our body position during the zip-line and why, and what to do if the wind in the gorge blew us off centre a bit. We were also told where to keep our hands and where we should most definitely NOT put our hands.

Steven would go across the zip-line first and then as we were nearing the end of the line, he would indicate to us to start to slow ourselves down by pressing gently on the cable behind the pulley. this would gradually reduce our speed, but not too much that we would stop across the gorge before reaching the end. The instructions were clear and any questions we had were gladly answered!

And so we were ready to go! Bryan went first and by the fourth zip-line, he was so comfortable, he was literally launching into the sky!

The Zip-lines were absolutely brilliant. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and loved the fact that the zip-lines crisscrossing the gorge were long enough that you had time to really observe the gorge during the ride.

There are two long waterfalls tumbling down the sides of the gorge and as we progressed along the zip-lines, the view of the advancing Kranshoek beach just became more and more beautiful. There is a hike that takes you to Kranshoek Beach and along the coastline, and this is also on our list now! We could see a couple of hikers down near the coastline and it looks like an incredibly scenic route.
 

After completing the four ziplines, we climbed on to the bus which was waiting to take us back to the gearing up station, so we could remove all the harness, gloves, helmet and hairnet equipment!

Once we were done we decided to go to the Kranshoek View Point, which is a little further than the final zip-lining platform and at the cliff edge. The view is simply incredible!

The time from driving in to Harkerville Forest (by the way, there is a SANPARKS entrance fee to pay here, but as we have a Wild Card, entrance was free), to leaving Harkerville Forest, was about 1 hour 30 mins.

So, in summary, Bryan and I loved the Knysna Ziplines. They are high and they are long and they are fast, so if you love the sound of that, then you must book! As you can see, the scenery is spectacular, we felt entirely safe and trusted our two guides Nigel and Steven and had a fabulous morning’s adventure.

 

Article & photographs by Garden Route Unearthed.

Location: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ds3tLFV3ttrLQ4Nn8

Tripadvisor link