Northern Cape

In the far north, where the province meets the countries beyond it, a very large arid park runs across an international boundary and is managed jointly by both sides — one of the earliest arrangements of its kind. The landscape is red dunes with grass on them, separated by two broad dry riverbeds that carry water only rarely but hold the trees, the waterholes and consequently most of the wildlife. That structure makes game viewing here unusually legible: you drive the riverbeds, and the animals are along them. The lions of this system are famous for the dark manes the males carry, and there are cheetah and leopard in numbers that reward patience, but the real distinction is the raptors and the sheer graphic emptiness — a gemsbok on a red dune against a hard blue sky is the image people come away with. It is remote, largely self-catering, hot in summer and genuinely cold on winter nights, and the inner routes want a high-clearance vehicle. Book well ahead; the accommodation inside is limited and popular.

The western districts of this province are the heartland of the spring bloom, and the scale here is what distinguishes it from displays further south: after a good winter, hundreds of kilometres of otherwise bare semi-desert turn to unbroken sheets of orange, white, magenta and yellow, from the coast to well inland. Whole hillsides change colour. There are reserves and conservancies set up specifically for it, small towns that fill for the few weeks it lasts, and roadside verges that are as good as anywhere. The two practical rules are non-negotiable and catch people out every year: the flowers open to face the sun, so go in the middle of a bright day rather than early or late, and they simply do not open under cloud. And since the display depends on how much rain fell over the winter, it is worth checking what is actually happening before committing a long drive to it.

The Orange is South Africa's largest river and it runs the length of this province, which in a semi-desert makes it the organising feature of everything — a green thread of vineyards and irrigated farmland cutting through country that is otherwise bare. At one point it falls into a deep granite gorge in a waterfall that would be a headline attraction almost anywhere else and here is quietly signposted; in flood it is genuinely thunderous, and the gorge below it runs for kilometres with rock formations and klipspringer on the ledges. Upstream, multi-day canoe and raft trips run the calmer stretches between desert banks, camping on sandbars — an unhurried, hot, slow-moving few days that is one of the more distinctive things to do in South Africa and almost entirely domestic in its clientele.

The province's largest town grew from a diamond rush in the 1870s, and at its centre is the excavation that rush produced: an enormous crater, hundreds of metres across, dug largely by hand before mechanisation, now partly filled with startling green water. It is one of the biggest holes ever made by human effort and standing on the viewing platform at its lip is genuinely arresting in a way photographs do not convey. Around it, a museum quarter reconstructs the mining town of the period with original buildings moved onto the site, and there is an underground exhibit and a display of stones. It is a half-day, it is the province's one substantial piece of built heritage, and it explains why a large town exists in the middle of that particular expanse of nothing.

The combination of high altitude, exceptionally dry air, stable atmosphere and almost no artificial light makes the interior of this province some of the best observing country on the planet, and the astronomers arrived accordingly: there is a major optical observatory on a mountain plateau in the south, and a very large radio-astronomy array out in the emptier flats, whose siting depended on there being essentially no radio interference for a great distance in any direction. For a visitor the practical upshot is simply the night sky — from almost anywhere in this province, on a moonless night, the Milky Way is bright enough to cast a suggestion of shadow, and several small towns run public stargazing as a result.

In the far north-west corner, where the province meets the river and the country beyond it, lies a mountain desert of extraordinary starkness — jagged ranges, almost no rain, and a remarkable concentration of succulent plants found nowhere else. Part of it is recognised internationally as a cultural landscape rather than a natural one, because the Nama communities who live there still practise a seasonal herding movement and still build the portable domed rush-mat houses that go with it. It is difficult country: four-wheel drive, self-sufficiency and real preparation are required, and it is not a casual detour. As for the province generally, the rules are the same everywhere in it — distances are enormous, fuel stops are far apart and worth planning around rather than assuming, mobile coverage is patchy, and summer heat in the interior is severe. How the country's distances work generally, and when to fly rather than drive them, is covered in the getting-around guide. Spring, autumn and winter are the comfortable seasons, with the flower weeks and the winter nights in the Kalahari both worth building a trip around.