Golden Gate Highlands National Park

In the rolling foothills of the Maluti Mountains, where the eastern Free State climbs toward the Lesotho border, Golden Gate Highlands National Park takes its name from a pair of sandstone cliffs that flank the valley entrance and turn molten gold in the late-afternoon sun. The rock is the Clarens Formation — a light-coloured, fine-grained sandstone that weathers from near-white to tan and ochre — and its most celebrated outcrop, the Brandwag ("sentinel") Buttress, rises in sheer walls exceeding 100 metres in places. Proclaimed in 1963, the park is the Free State's only national park and is often described as South Africa's only grassland national park; its terrain climbs from roughly 1,800 metres on the plateau to the 2,829-metre summit of Ribbokkop.

This is high-country grassland rather than big-game bushveld: no lions or elephants roam here, but herds of eland, black wildebeest, blesbok, springbok and Burchell's zebra graze the slopes alongside grey rhebok and the threatened oribi. The cliffs and thermals draw some of southern Africa's rarest birds, among them the bearded vulture (lammergeier), Cape vulture and southern bald ibis. The park is equally renowned in scientific circles: in 1978 palaeontologist James Kitching recovered fossilised Massospondylus eggs and embryos from a road cut at Rooidraai, specimens counted among the oldest dinosaur embryos ever discovered.

Long before it was a park, these sheltered sandstone overhangs were painted by San hunter-gatherers, and their rock art survives in the caves. Malaria-free and a few hours' drive from Johannesburg by way of the artists' town of Clarens, Golden Gate rewards walkers and drivers alike with wide grassland vistas, snow-dusted winter peaks, and the daily spectacle of stone catching fire at sunset.