Namaqualand - More than just Flowers

Goegap Nature Reserve, Springbok, Namaqualand

15 kilometres south-east of Springbok is the 15 000 hectare Hester Malan Wildflower Garden. Named after the wife of one of the apartheid era bureaucrats of the Cape, the reserve was extended in 1990 and also got a new name. Goegap is Nama for waterhole, an evocative name when summer temperatures can reach anywhere between 30 and 48C.

In this semi-desert, it is the uncertain winter rainfall that determines the flowers. Spring begins somewhere between August and September and timing is everything.

For a few weeks each year, the red sand sprouts fields of wild flowers and on sunny days with the sun at your back, the resulting spectacle is positively psychedelic. Throw in a mountain zebra or an ostrich amongst the blooms and ... happy snapping! The reserve's seventeen kilometre circular driving route is on good roads with ample picnic sites.

Day-long biking and hiking trails beckon as well as a longer two day trail. Or, if you prefer the challenge of the open road to the allure of the beaten track, there are 4x4 routes through this succulent-studded African Arizona. Overnight facilities include a self-catering group chalet and a smaller cottage.

Leliefontein, Namaqualand

30 km east of Springbok is the oldest village in Namaqualand. The Methodists pipped the rest of the early missionaries to the starting post and Reverend Barnabas Shaw set up his mission here in 1816. Leliefontein is one of the villages on the Namaqualand mission route, a revealing exploration of the earliest beginnings of African colonial expansion.

Surprisingly, given the unwelcoming terrain, Namaqualand and its surrounds were the first areas to be explored by seventeenth century adventurers and missionaries just three years after the Dutch East India Company sent Jan Van Riebeeck to set up a way-station at the Cape for its trading ships. Their imprint is stamped on the churches and schools and people of Namaqualand, to this day.