Karoo National Park is South Africa’s desert-like park, great to visit especially for it's stunning and beautiful scenery. Karoo national park is a must visit destination. The sprawling desert-like park stretches away to the horizon and is great to visit as its desolation and beauty is somehow soothing to see.
Karoo National Park both below and above the Great Escarpment is situated on the Beaufort group of rocks, which form part of the Karoo geological system of deposits.The Beaufort sediments were laid down on a vast alluvial plain covering much of what was to become Southern Africa, when it was still part of Gondwana, beginning about 280 million years ago, and ending about 240 million years ago.
Karoo National Park, founded in 1979, is a wildlife reserve in the Great Karoo area of the Western Cape, South Africa near Beaufort West. This semi-desert area covers an area of 750 square kilometres (290 sq mi). The Nuweveld portion of the Great Escarpment runs through the Park. It is therefore partly in the Lower Karoo, at about 850 m above sea level, and partly in the Upper Karoo at over 1300 m altitude
Climate: Karoo National Park
Annual rainfall ranges between 100 and 500mm, averaging at about 200mm. Summer rainfall comes mostly in the form of thunderstorms or cold fronts from the Cape. The winters are frosty and chilly, when temperatures drop to below 0 degrees Celcius, with snow sometimes visible on the peaks of the Nuweveld Mountains. Summers are hot, with temperatures rising up to 40 degrees Celcius.
Karoo National Park both below and above the Great Escarpment is situated on the Beaufort group of rocks, which form part of the Karoo geological system of deposits.The Beaufort sediments were laid down on a vast alluvial plain covering much of what was to become Southern Africa, when it was still part of Gondwana, beginning about 280 million years ago, and ending about 240 million years ago. These 6 km thick sediments were deposited by rivers similar in size and number to the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Indus rivers which drain the Himalaya mountains on the Indian subcontinent today. In Gondwana, when the Beaufort sediments were being laid down, the Himalaya-sized mountains were to the south of the present South African coastline, on what is geologically known as the “Falklands Plateau”, now separated from South Africa by continental drift, and lying as severely eroded islands in the south western Atlantic Ocean. A large variety of amphibians and reptiles lived on the lush vegetation of these well-watered plains, the most interesting of which were the mammal-like reptiles, which have made the Karoo paleontologically famous. Their fossils have been found all over the Karoo. Some of these fossils are on display in the Park, though none of them have been found there.
About 60 million years after the Beaufort sediments had been laid down and topped with a thick layer of desert sands, there was an outpouring of lava on to Southern Africa on a titanic scale. The entire area was covered within a very short space of time with a 1.5 km thick layer of lava, the remnants of which form the Drakensberg. In addition to flooding the African surface with lava, lava was also forced under great pressure between the sedimentary layers of the Beaufort rocks.
Most of the visitors to Karoo National Park access it by car as this allows them the freedom to explore the Park at their own leisure. The rest camp is situated 12km from the town of Beaufort West in the Western Cape, off the N1 highway. The Park is a convenient stopover on the N1 between the Cape and the interior of the country. Cape Town is about 500km south of the Park, while Johannesburg is about 1 000km north of the Park.
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The main attraction of the park is its isolation and the untouched feeling of being in the wild that it gives off. Although a number of animals and birds do call Karoo their home, it is the scenery and feeling of the place that keeps calling visitors back to it.
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