South Africa Safaris to the West Coast National Park

The West Coast National Park is an exciting park with ocean views of the Atlantic. The park is best visited in the spring time (in South Africa spring runs between August and October) when an abundance of wild flowers make it very photogenic. Head for the Postberg Flower Reserve to see the best blooms. The West Coast National Park is a favourite for bird watchers and is a good place to see some of the most distinctive African birds including large flocks of Flamingos, penguins and the ostrich. Located about an hour and a half to the north of Cape Town (which is brief by South African driving standards) it also has some very scenic driving routes along the R27 coastal road. The West Coast National Park is one of the main nature parks in the Western Cape and it covers more than one hundred square metres. The park stretches from the salt marshes of Langebaan Lagoon in the north down to Yzerfontein town in the south.  

South Africa Safari to the Karoo National Park

The Karoo National Park is one of the most distinctive national parks in South Africa. It used to be volcanically active which is why many strange looking rock formations and mountains still remain. This is the place to see the rare black rhinoceros and other endangered species. The Karoo National Park is also a testament to the ancient history of South Africa with many fossils having been found here. Because this part of the Western Cape used to be under the sea, sediment preserved the bodies of deceased creatures. Some of the fossils which were found date all the way back to the Mesozoic Era, making them more than three million years old.
The park was founded in 1979 with the purpose of helping conserve the wildlife of South Africa. From then up until the present day many of these endangered animals were actually brought here so that they could live in peace and try to regroup their numbers. One particular experiment was the Quagga project in which the effort was made to bring back to life a near extinct sub-species of the plains zebra. The project had mixed success with some hybrids being born that looked almost like Quaggas.
As an area of semi-arid desert the Karoo National Park attracts a number of small mammals like tortoises and the Riverine rabbit, as well as the predators which hunt them such as the Black Eagle. The park is located in Karoo, near Beaufort West, which is in the Western Cape.

South Africa Safaris to the Mountain Zebra National Park

If you are on the Eastern Cape of South Africa then the Mountain Zebra National Park is one of the most intriguing national parks for a South Africa Safari. It is also one of the oldest, having been formed in 1937 with the express aim of preserving the Cape Mountain Zebra. This was a difficult task and there were initially only a handful of the nearly extinct zebras left to breed. But a local farmer traded the park 11 zebras in return for another animal called a blesbok and by 1964 there were 25 Cape Mountain Zebras. Over the years the park increased in size and now there are around 250 Cape Mountain Zebras. The park also acted as a refuge for other animals including the eland, the cape buffalo, the gemsbok and the caracal. In fact wildlife at the Mountain Zebra National Park comes in all conceivable colours including the black wildebeest, the grey rhebok, the red hartebeest and the black rhino.