Top five overseas road trips to add to your bucketlist
Some people go on an overseas holiday to sit by a beach, down a Pina Colada or two and watch the sun go down.Others like the cities with their museums, bars and streetscapes. But we’re betting a lot of you want to grab a car and head off on the road-trip adventure of a lifetime. These are our choices you can add to the bucket list.
Highway One, California, USA
California is a huge drawcard for Australian visitors seeing as how it’s just across the Pacific and easily accessible. And iconic road trips don’t come much better than the coastal route between Los Angeles and San Francisco that includes Highway One. The road has just re-opened after being closed by a huge landslide in 2017, so now’s a great time to tackle it. Head out of LA to Santa Barbara, with its adobe-style mission houses and bounteous vineyards, and then Morro Bay where you’re sure to spot a cute sea otter. From there it’s all scenic overload as the road follows the beach on one side (watch for seal colonies lounging on the sand) and mountains on the other. You’ll drive through the Big Sur with its massive redwoods, and eventually arrive in Carmel, Monterey and Pebble Beach before continuing to San Fran. The weather is often foggy, but if you can rent or borrow a convertible, you’ll never regret it.
Route Napoleon, France
When Napoleon Bonaparte attempted his second world tour in 1815 by escaping from the island of Elba and heading north through France from the Mediterranean coast, he probably didn’t realise the route he forged would become one of Europe’s better driving roads. Napoleon’s run ended abruptly at Waterloo, but for the purposes of this trip you’ll want to start at Golfe Juan on the coast near Cannes and end up at Grenoble east of Lyon, a distance of about 325km. The Route Napoleon is well signposted (look for the imperial eagle markers) and takes in a number of modern day roads, but the main attraction is scenery, with lots of twists and turns. The busy Cote d’Azur gives way to the mountainous pre-Alps after the perfume-making town of Grasse; you can detour to the majestic Gorges du Verdon then it’s the back-blocks of Provence with towns such as Digne les Bains, Sisteron (famous for its lamb), Gap and then Grenoble. Get behind the wheel of a Renault Megane RS with Abba’s ‘Waterloo’ belting out of the speakers and you might just beat the lap record.
Garden Route, South Africa
A trip to Africa isn’t just about seeing the lions, leopards and giraffes; anyone visiting the southern part of South Africa and feels like a great drive should head straight for the world famous Garden Route. This extraordinary coastal road of magnificent beaches, hilly passes and mysterious forests starts about 390km east of Cape Town, then meanders for another 300km east along the way to Port Elizabeth. Mossel Bay is the natural kick-off point and a handy place to stay, but when you get to George the panoramas really open up at places like Dolphin Point, or the beautiful beach at Wilderness. Sedgefield has a busy Saturday market and from there, the drive to Plettenberg Bay is very pleasant, as is the chance to see seal colonies further on at Robberg Nature Reserve. You’ll probably have stopped at a winery and a restaurant or two, but the final stage through the Tsitsikamma section of the Garden Route National Park with its verdant forests and abundant lakes is simply unforgettable.
Rodovia Transamazônica, Brazil
The Trans-Amazonian Highway is huge: some 4000km long, it was started in the early 1970s as a government project to open up what was then a largely uninhabited part of Brazil. It travels east-west across the Amazon basin and real road-trippers might want to do the whole thing; those of us who just want a self-drive tour of the Amazon rainforest may want to plump for ‘just’ the 1700km section between Altimira in the east, and Porto Velho in the west. Most of this section is unpaved, so you’ll need a 4WD, and tackle it in the dry season (April to September) but conditions aren’t much worse than the typical Outback Australian road. You’ll come across lots of little farms that have sprung up, quite a few disturbing scenes of deforestation, but also nature reserves such as Balata-Tufari National Forest with its sustainable rainforest timber products, or the Humaitá National Forest and its magnificent greenery.
Hokkaido Scenic Byway, Japan
If a trip to Japan evokes images of traffic-clogged Tokyo and its vast urban sprawl, then think again. Head to the northern island of Hokkaido and things are a lot more peaceful and car-friendly with lots of rolling hills, pleasant roads dotted with welcoming ryokan (traditional inns) and even a few national parks. The island has developed itineraries called scenic byways and if you fly in, hire a car and set out to explore them there’s plenty to see. If you arrive at Kushiro Airport, for instance, you can do a 200km drive taking in Lake Akan and its mountainous surrounds, plus the forests and lakes near Teshikaga. Other routes include fishing villages, fields of lavender and other flowers, past gently smoking volcanoes and all the best that rural Japan has to offer.
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