South Africa Guide
KwaZulu-Natal
The Ukhahlamba Drakensberg
Hugging the border with Lesotho, South Africa's premier mountain wilderness is mostly a vast national park, officially known as the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Park. The tallest range in southern Africa, the "Dragon Mountains" (or, in Zulu, the "barrier of spears") reach their highest peaks along the border with Lesotho. The range is actually an escarpment separating a high interior plateau from the coastal lowlands of KwaZulu-Natal, and is the source of many streams and rivers which flow out to the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Although this is a continuation of the same escarpment that divides the Mpumalanga highveld from the game-rich lowveld of the Kruger National Park, and continues into the northern section of the Eastern Cape, when people talk of the Berg, they invariably mean the range in KwaZulu-Natal.