Garden Route or Panorama Route?
These are the two drives every South Africa itinerary ends up weighing. They're different trips, and most travellers have time for one. The mistake is treating them as interchangeable scenic drives. They aren't.
Garden Route
A coastal drive from Cape Town toward Plettenberg Bay: lagoon, forest, beach, and cliff, strung over roughly 300 km. Five to seven days done properly, and it pairs naturally with the Winelands and Cape Town as the western half of a trip.
Best for: first-timers, families, a mix of coast and forest, and anyone whose trip is anchored on the Cape.
Panorama Route
An escarpment loop above Kruger: the Blyde River Canyon, God's Window, Bourke's Luck Potholes, and the third-largest canyon on earth. One to two days, and it pairs naturally with a Kruger safari as the northern half of a trip.
Best for: anyone already going to Kruger, dramatic geology, and a short, high-impact stop.
How they actually feel
The Garden Route is a slow drive. You stop a lot. You eat. You walk a beach. You lose a morning to a lagoon. It rewards lingering and punishes a schedule that tries to "do" it in two days.
The Panorama Route is a half-day of viewpoints. You drive, you get out, you look at something vast, you drive on. It's high payoff for the time, and it doesn't ask much of you.
Which to pick, if you only have one
It depends on where the rest of your trip already is. If you're doing Cape Town, do the Garden Route; it's right there, and the Cape coast is the Cape coast. If you're doing Kruger, add the Panorama Route; it's a morning's drive from the Kruger gate and it would be strange to skip it.
If you're doing both Cape Town and Kruger, do them in sequence: Cape Town into the Garden Route, then fly to the Kruger gateway and do the Panorama Route as a day off the park. That's the two-drive trip, and it's the best two-drive trip in the country.
The one not to do
Adding the Garden Route to a Kruger-and-Panorama-Route trip when you're under twelve nights. You'll spend the whole trip in a car and remember the motorway. Pick a coast or pick a canyon. You can come back for the other.