North West Travel Guide

HOME Brochure Downloads SOUTH AFRICA Cape Town Metro Eastern Cape Free State Garden Route Gauteng Kruger Park Kwazulu Natal Limpopo Mpumalanga North West Northern Cape Western Cape AFRICA Botswana Kenya Malawi Mozambique Namibia Swaziland Tanzania Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe Advertising	The bushveld plateau of South Africa is perhaps no better excemplified than by the North West Province, a sprawling, irregularly undulating area of hot weather, semi-arid scrub, deep, fertile soil and flat, open plains interrupted by oddly-shaped rock formations. Forming part of the old Transvaal Republic and later (as recently as the early 1990s) the Western Transvaal, Northern Cape and the 'independent' homeland of Bophuthatswana, the province, geographically close to Gauteng, is an ideal destination for city holiday makers seeking a relaxing break in the untouched splendour of nature. The towns of the North West range in size but few are large enough to be burdened with the responsibility of maintaining a large population in a large city, and as a result all towns possess a unique but similar atmosphere of hospitality and a refreshing rural charm. Horizons here seem endless, thorn trees interrupting infinite maize plantations on a land of crisp winters and long, warm summers. This land has played host to many of South Africa's different peoples, from the Stone Age Khoi-San, who for centuries hunted once plentiful herds of game, to the tswana people from the north, who settled and established intricate hutted camps enclosed by low stone walls, to missionaries founding stations in the 1830s in the area of what is today's town of Zeerust, to the Voortrekker immigrants of European descent, natural born farmers who found conditions ideal and idyllic, forming many legally temporary but somehow emotionally permanent republics. The area remained principally a farming area, until the discovery of diamonds in the Vaal River near towns like Christiana and Lichtenburg, and the greatest diamond rush the world has ever known soon followed. With the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand to the east, and in areas surrounding the Vredefort Dome, a meteorite crater, the are enjoyed an unprecedented boom. Mining still takes place and the Bafekeng, who are stakeholders in the AMPLATS Platinum mine near Rustenburg, have become very affluent from it. Nowhere else in South Africa will you encounter as timeless a culture, as laidback a local population and more rugged and unaffected a land.	click to view map TOWNS Hartbeespoort Lichtenburg Mafikeng Rustenburg Zeerust
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