Northern+Cape

The region of Northern Cape is the largest province in South Africa, and covers approximately one third of all land in South Africa. With all this land you would expect the region to also have the greatest population, however the region actually contains the smallest population in South Africa with a little over one million people living there. The Atlantic Ocean is the western border of Northern Cape with the capital Kimberley occupying the eastern border. The vast area in between the borders is a semi-dry region that experiences extremely high temperatures with little rainfall during summer months, December through March. During winter, June through August the temperature can be cold and snowfall has known to occur.

One of the most important assets in Northern Cape is the Orange River that provides water for crops of cotton, dates, and grapes. Many prosperous towns and villages are populated along the banks of the river. Along the western coastline fishing grounds provide an additional source of revenue and the discovery of alluvial diamonds made the capital city of Kimberley famous. Perhaps the greatest attraction in Northern Cape is during springtime when an annual explosion of wild flowers takes place. Plants such as the elephant’s trunk, tree aloe and a variety of succulents appear annually and attract thousands of tourists.

An interesting attraction in Northern Cape is located in Kimberley and called “The Big Hole”. It is a spectacular site, a gaping hole measuring 215 meters deep with a perimeter of 1.6 kilometers. The Big Hole is entirely man made and is the largest hand-dug excavation in the world. It was created in 1866 after a man called Erasmus Jacobs found what he thought was a shiny pebble on the banks of the Orange River. The shiny pebble turned out to be a 21.25-carat diamond. A diamond rush soon followed and thousands of miners came to Kimberley in hopes of finding diamonds and soon an underground mining area was created. Mining is no longer an operation at the Big Hole, however it was turned into a tourist experience where visitors can go underground and experience what a mining shaft was like and view a diamond displays.

The Northern Cape is also home to one of the world’s largest telescopes called The Southern African Large Telescope or SALT. It is located in Sutherland, a small town located 400 Km from Cape Town. The telescope has a hexagonal primary mirror measuring eleven meters across and is made up of ninety-one individual one-meter hexagonal mirrors. SALT is funded by a group of international partners from South Africa, the United States, Germany, Poland, India, United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The facility has been fully operational since September 2011 and is the largest astronomical observatory in the southern hemisphere.