Blyde River Canyon
From a distance, the Blyde River Canyon is spectacular and beautiful; from close to it just gets better. The Blyde River Nature Reserve extends from the Pinnacle and Gods Window in the south to where the Blyde River Canyon ends at Swadini in the north.
There are a number of principle scenic attractions, which most visitors will have seen on countless postcards and brochures well before they reach the reserve. In the south is the Pinnacle, a freestanding quartzite rock pillar rising above fern-clad ravine and God's Window where the vertical cliff of a deep gorge frames the view of the forest and expansive Lowveld.
In the heart of the reserve Bourke's Luck potholes, where the converging Blyde and Treur rivers have eroded deep , cylindrical shafts into the river's bedrock after aeons of swirling, whirlpool erosion. Nearby a visitor's center explains the geological history of the area, as well as some of the socio-historic features - the canyon was a tourist attraction well before the arrival of European settlers, and implements discovered here date back the Middle Stone Age, 75 000 years ago. Further north and the Three Rondavels Viewpoint offers a famous South African view of the organic mountain shapes and the distant waters of the Blydepoort Dam.
The reserve contains five of the 71 different veld types found in South Africa: northeastern mountainsourveld, mixed bushveld, Lowveld sour bushveld, and Lowveld and sourish mixed bushveld. The high summits have montane sour grassland while a few meters along ravines drop through montane forest to riparian forest on the banks of the river and plains of dry bushveld and protea veld. There's wildlife too: it's shy, so only hikers are likely to see much, but the park is a sanctuary for the rare samango monkey as well as bushbabies and vervets. Predators include civet, leopard, genet, serval, and caracal. Hippo and croc lurk in the rivers and lakes and the most distinctive of the bird species are eagles, buzzards, and falcons.
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