This is the land of the Great Kalahari, Namaqualand and the upper Karoo, all of which are sunny, very hot and very dry. But underneath its seemlingly hostile landscape it hides great mineral wealth, like its diamond fields. It is here where, in 1866, a young Erasmus Jacobs picked the pretty white pebble from De Kalk's arid earth to discover later that he was holding Eureka, a 21,25 carat, yellow diamond fated to shape the destiny of millions and show to all that in the apparent barrenness of the empty earth lay unimaginable riches.

The landscape has a few unique characteristics that were captured by the film The Gods Must Be Crazy include: the ancient lava mountains that plunge to red-soil pede plains (the Kalahari Desert), the turbulently thundering waters of the mighty Orange River plunging into the gaping granite chasm of the Augrabies and Namaqualand's floral carpet of thousands of square kilometres that gets rolled out once a year.

The hunter-gatherer Khoi-San peoples have lived here for millions of years in exactly the same way they are today.

The Northern Cape has also yielded several fossils from the early and late Jurassic period, when the climate was quite different from what it is today.

This is the outdoors province with well-stocked game reserves, 4X4 trails, unique plant species and mute stone forts and blood red sunsets.

The principal centre in the area is the town of Kimberley that also has the world's largest, man-made hole (into which you could fit two-and-a-half Empire State buildings!). The nineteenth century goldrush that characterised the Johannesburh area was matched by a diamond rush to the area where the famus De Beer's Company first got started.

Although we have only been able to find one gay friendly venue in the province the gay tour groups Africa Outing, Dumile Tours and Africa Man Holidays all organise spectacular tours to the area.