Nothern Cape Discovered – South Africa
The Northern Cape this patchwork of dramatic contrasts and extremes reflect facets of Nature at her most implacable, as alien in places as a lunar landscape – stark, arid and marked by haphazard outcroppings of crags and giant rocks piled high.Across vast expanses of space and silence, the Northern Cape antelope abound, where spartan vegetation has adapted in ingenious ways to drought and blazing summer sunshine.
Northern Cape vegetation
The Northern Cape has unpredictable thunderstorms – startling sometimes in intensity – occasionally bringing solace to a thirsty land. And when they do, as if in reparation for patience and endurance, the plains and valleys are transformed into a mosaic of ephemeral spring flowers, gold and purple, pink and white, stretching into infinity. Namaqualand (an arid region of South Africa, extending along the west coast over 600 miles (970 km) and covering a total area of 170,000 square miles) in bloom is a breathtaking spectacle – and one of the wonders of the world.
The Northern Cape as a whole is fresh and unpolluted, with skies of brilliant burning clarity, embellished frequently with banks of iridescent clouds and sunsets bright as burnished copper. Distant mirages shimmer on roads flanked by telephone poles – at times the only evidence of man’s encroachment.
A high-flying wilderness plateau named the Karoo (a Hottentot word ‘land of thirst’) covers much of the southern region of the Northern Cape, while the Orange-Namaqua region comprises the lower orange River Valley, Bushmanland, Namaqualand and part of the Kalahari Desert.
In the northern most corner of the Northern Cape Province the borders meet with the Republic of Namibia, Botswana at its apex with the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park.
