Northern Cape

Photographer Unknown Click on the image for larger version

Home to the ancient San people, the Northern Cape is about wide-open spaces, an utterly beautiful coastline and a number of unique national parks offering the tourist a very different experience of the South African landscape. This province boasts a colourful history and a variety of cultural tourist attractions and is particularly well known for its incredible annual floral display that takes place in Namaqualand.

Overview. The Northern Cape lies to the south of the mighty Orange River and comprises mostly desert and semi-desert. The landscape is characterised by vast arid plains with outcroppings of haphazard rock piles. The cold Atlantic Ocean forms the western boundary. This region covers the largest area of all the provinces yet has the smallest population. The last remaining true San (Bushman) people live in the Kalahari area of the Northern Cape. The whole area, especially along the Orange and Vaal rivers, is rich in San rock engravings. The province is also rich in fossils.

GETTING TO KNOW THE NORTHERN CAPE

The Northern Cape’s sheer size, clear skies, flamboyant sunsets, brilliant starry nights and incredible silence is powerfully intoxicating. This is the kind of place you want to take in slowly.

Photo by Neil Moultrie Click on the image for larger version

• Augrabies Falls National Park. One of the lesser-known game parks in the country, it is here, on the Orange River, that Africa’s second largest waterfall thunders down into a granite gorge in a spectacular display. Adventure activities are par for the course at this attraction, including rafting, hiking and cycling as well as canoe trails.

• Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. The Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, together with the Gemsbok National Park in Botswana, is Africa's first transfrontier game park, known as the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. It is one of the largest nature conservation areas in southern Africa, and one of the largest remaining protected natural ecosystems in the world. The Park provides unfenced access to a variety of game between South Africa and Botswana, and has a surface area of more than two million hectares.

Photographer Unknown Click on the image for larger version

• Diamond Digging Country. Kimberley boasts an excellent museum called the Kimberley Mine Museum. Part of the museum includes the viewing decks into the Big Hole, as well as a number of historic buildings. The old shops, bars, restaurants, churches and banks appear almost exactly as they were during the diamond digging days. Known as a `living museum’, a visit here is like stepping back in time to the days when Barney Barnato and Cecil John Rhodes were kings; and diamonds were there for the picking.

• Flowers, Flowers Everywhere. During August and September, the area of Namaqualand is transformed into a brilliant carpet of wild flowers. The area is world-famous for its transformed landscape and floral beauty – and photographic safaris to the area are very popular with both local and international tourists. Nowadays, it can be said that the Namaqualand experiences something of a `gold rush’ during peak season.

• Rock Art. The province is rich in San rock art paintings that date back to time immemorial. The San were hunter-gatherers who lived off the desert, and their rich heritage has been preserved in numerous paintings found in caves all over the Northern Cape region.