• South Africa Guide

  • Introduction to South Africa
  • Weather
  • Things Not to Miss
  • Getting Around
  • Entry Requirements

• Explore South Africa

  • Cape Town
  • The Western Cape
  • The Northern Cape
  • The Eastern Cape
  • KwaZulu-Natal
  • Free State
  • Gauteng
  • North West Province
  • Mpumalanga
  • Limpopo

• Cities

  • Cape Town
    
  • Durban
    
  • Johannesburg
    
  • Port Elizabeth
    
  • Pretoria
    

South Africa Guide

Limpopo

Limpopo province is South Africa's no-man's-land: a hot, thornbush-covered area caught between the dynamic heartland of Gauteng and, to the north, the Limpopo River, which acts as South Africa's border with Zimbabwe and, further west, Botswana. Running through the centre of this no-man's-land is the busy N1 highway, here often called the Great North Road. The N1 links a series of towns established by the Voortrekker settlers; most of these are little more than service centres for the surrounding farmland, and there is no good reason to spend any time in any of them. The N1 is also South Africa's umbilical cord to the rest of Africa, and the importance of the N1 overshadows the rest of the province.

The eastern side of the province is game-rich lowveld, dominated by the seventy-kilometre-wide strip of Kruger National Park abutting the Mozambique border. The principal attractions of the rest of the province lie in its three wild and distinctive mountain escarpments. The most significant of these is the first rise of the Drakensberg Escarpment, on its long and often spectacular sweep through South Africa from north to south, marking the descent from highveld to lowveld. There's a lot to see in the mountains themselves, especially in the haunting, forested slopes of the Letaba area immediately to the east of Polokwane, the provincial capital. This region of lakes and waterfalls also provides some excellent walking and comfortable country guesthouses.