Augrabies Falls National Park

In the far northwest of South Africa's Northern Cape, the Orange River, known to many by its Khoekhoe name the Gariep, spreads wide and shallow across a plateau of bare granite before funnelling into a single channel and dropping roughly 56 metres in a roar of white water. The Khoi who lived here called the place Ankoerebis, the "place of great noise," a name the later Trekboers softened into Augrabies. In summer flood the cataract turns genuinely violent: during the record floods of 1988 it is reported to have surged at close to 7,800 cubic metres of water per second.

The falls sit at the head of one of the country's most dramatic ravines, an 18-kilometre gorge cut some 240 metres deep into ancient granite basement rock, a textbook example of a river slowly sawing its way into resistant stone. Smooth domes and water-polished boulders frame the drop, and a boardwalk of viewpoints lets visitors watch the river vanish into the chasm below.

Augrabies Falls was proclaimed a national park in 1966 and is managed today by South African National Parks (SANParks). Beyond the falls it guards a stark, sun-blasted desert studded with quiver trees (kokerboom), where klipspringer pick across the rocks, gemsbok and springbok cross the plains, Cape clawless otters work the river, and breeding pairs of Verreaux's eagles ride the updraughts; black rhino have also been reintroduced. With midsummer heat pushing toward 40 degrees C, the milder months of autumn and spring are the most comfortable time to explore, though the falls themselves are at their most powerful from February to April.