Source: Southern Africa’s top 21 parks taken from the April 2010 Issue of Getaway Magazine.
Space glorious space…If you’d been standing anywhere in the Karoo National Park a few hundred million years ago, you’d be drowning – or be something resembling a fish. By Evan Haussmann.
On the surface of it, looking across the undulating plains toward the Nuweveld Mountains, this place is devoid of anything more than scrubby brush and big sky. Those who’ve scratched a little below that dusty surface have uncovered empirical evidence of a world when the Karoo was an inland sea.
Fortunately, you don’t have to scrabble around in the prehistoric seabed for glimpses of the world before it knew us. One of the attractions in the Karoo National Park is a 400-metre long fossil trail. The paved, wheelchair-friendly palaeo- and geological attraction is a display of animal and petrified wood fossils preserved by layers of sediment and time.
There’s something for everyone in the Karoo National Park – even old fossils.
Other trails are the 800-metre Bossie Trail, with descriptions of traditional medicinal plants. The third, the Pointer Trail, offers two hikes of five or 11,5 kilometres taking in beautiful Karoo vistas.
Roads in the park near Beaufort West are good and a few new routes have been opened. You can now take your family sedan on a scenic drive up Klipspringer Pass, a 50-kilometre loop with a picnic site and toilets at the halfway mark. There are also two new 4×4 trails. The 13-kilometre Afsaal EcoTrail is do-able in a 4×2 softroader with good clearance in dry conditions, according to Sanparks’ forum.
If your 4×4 has low range, high clearance and you know how to use it, the 90-kilometre Nuweveld EcoTrail is a great round trip from the main rest camp.
There is room for six people to overnight at the fully equipped Embizweni cottage along this trail. The route passes abandoned farmhouses, crosses dry riverbeds and steep, rocky terrain. The game viewing on both trails is usually good.
In addition to fascinating succulents and reptiles, the Karoo National Park hosts the endangered riverine rabbit and the once critically endangered but now fairly abundant Cape mountain zebra. Look out for black rhino and one of the more than 20 breeding pairs of Verreauxs’ eagles. The area lays claim to five tortoise species, ‘the highest density per equivalent area in the world’. There are more springbok than you can shake a stick at and, to top it all, there are ‘quagga’. These long-extinct animals are in the process of being ‘resurrected’ through a selective breeding programme using zebras with lighter stripes.
True to their Karoo character, the plains are stinking hot in summer, although high-lying areas are much cooler. In winter, prepare for the possibility of snowfalls on the Nuweveld peaks.
Travel Advisor
Where to stay
$ to $$ There are 37 Cape Dutch-style cottages in the main rest camp.
For more information:
Tel 023-415-2828/9, e-mail, website.
For more on this park, visit Getaway.
This article was taken from the back issue of Getaway. April 2010 Special Edition.
| More info on the town of Beaufort West | More info on the Central Karoo area |
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