Africa south of the Limpopo River encompasses an amazing diversity of natural wonders within a relatively small area. A third of the subcontinent is thirst land. Parts are true desert. But also there are lush tropical and temperate forests, high mountain grasslands and soaring snow-capped peaks.

Lagoons and estuarine lakes fret the coastline. Deep inland, once-great lakes have become vast salt flats blistering in the sun, and rivers that flowed into them are now silent, sand-choked valleys. Elsewhere, mighty rivers carve gaping canyons through mountain ranges, thunder over stupendous waterfalls and dissipate in swamp wonderlands. These are places of pilgrimage, continually drawing people to marvel at the glories pf nature, reflect on the event of inconceivably distant ages and meditate upon their own place in nature and time.

This land, too, is the home of big game, and hosts of birds varied as the vast range of habitats and foods that nature has prepared for them.

South Africa is still home to the mysterious San, whose legends seem to go back to the beginning of life itself, and to the descendants of the Iron Age peoples who wandered down from the far north, during the last thousand years. Here too are peoples whose ancestors journeyed from East and West brining with them influences good and bad, innumerable subtleties of thought and ideas, and a complex range of life-styles, foods and customs.

Their legacy is one of the most scenically dramatic, healthiest and challenging regions of the world.