Namaqua

Namaqua National Park was established in 1999 in the Northern Cape province, in the Namaqualand region, and protects some 1,400 km² of the Succulent Karoo biome, one of the planet's two arid biodiversity hotspots and the only desert recognised as such.

The Succulent Karoo holds the greatest concentration of succulent plants in the world, with thousands of species adapted to a regime of scant but predictable winter rains, and an extremely high degree of endemism. For most of the year the landscape looks arid and bare, with low shrubs, quartzite and stony soils.

Everything changes between August and September. After the winter rains, millions of annual plants germinate and flower simultaneously, covering the ground in orange, white, yellow and purple to the horizon in what is regarded as the most spectacular mass flowering in the world. The phenomenon lasts a few weeks, varies greatly from year to year with the rains and draws a concentrated influx of visitors that is the park's main management challenge. Namaqua also includes an Atlantic coastal sector added later, with beaches and dunes. The wildlife is that of the semi-desert, with gemsbok, springbok and a notable diversity of reptiles and specialised pollinating invertebrates.