Welcome to South Africa

As you are probably already aware (if you read my previous posts), my 1^st country on this overland trip is South Africa (SA). Before I begin my overland journey through the inland of SA it is worth sharing a few factoids about this country to put things in better context and to educate myself (and you, if needed) a little about this corner of the world. Sorry if this seems a bit like school, but I want to share a little of what I learned from my research; hopefully you will find it as interesting as I do.

• As you can see in the map above, SA is the southern-most country in Africa, located between the latitudes 22-33 degrees south, which in terms of distance from the equator is the southern hemisphere equivalent to, say, Florida in the northern hemisphere.
• Roughly 3 times the size of Texas.
• Roughly 60 million people, compared to ~332 million in the U.S..
• 11 official languages (yikes), including Afrikaans, English, Northern Sotho, Xhosa, Zulu, Southern Sotho, Setswana (Tswana), Tsonga, Venda, Swati, Ndebele.
• Government is a parliamentary republic with executive, legislative and judicial branches, much like the U.S., except that the legislative branch is a parliament consisting of the National Assembly (similar in many, but not all, ways to the U.S. House of Representatives) and the National Council of Provinces (similar in many, but not all, ways to the U.S. Senate), and the president is elected by the Parliament (not directly by the people, as in the U.S.).
• Currency is the Rand.
• Major exports include gems (diamonds) and precious metals (gold), ores (iron), vehicles, mineral fuels including oil and coal briquettes.
• Modern humans have lived at the southern tip of Africa for more than 100,000 years and their (our) ancestors for some 3.3 million years.
• Suffered a sad, but all too common, European colonization history. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to explore SA in the mid-15^th century but only established trading posts on the coast and never actually colonized the continent. Later, the Dutch colonized SA in 1652 at what is today Cape Town and subsequently gradually expanded their occupation and displacement of the first nation peoples. Later, beginning in 1795, the British invaded SA and forced the Dutch, known as the Boer, to colonize even further inland. Following the discovery of gold and diamonds in the late 19^th century, the British defeated the Boers in a war to control most of the emerging country, and eventually in 1934 it became a sovereign nation state within the British Empire. Thankfully, the monarchy came to an end in 1961 and SA became the independent Republic of SA. Sadly, however, the white minority rule government was based on a policy of apartheid in which the first nation peoples had little human rights and no political power, until apartheid was finally abolished in 1994, at which time the country became a truly representative democratic republic.
• On the positive side, did you know that SA is the largest producer of macadamia nuts in the world?
• Currently, SA is the only country in the world that has voluntarily dismantled its nuclear arsenal – way to go SA!
• Has the oldest wine industry outside of Europe and the Mediterranean – perhaps I’ll spend some more time in SA tasting the wines on my next trip!
• Has ~9% of its total land area devoted to national parks, reserves and wildlife management areas – could do much better, I think!

OK, that’s it for my brief summary of some cool facts about South Africa, now let’s begin exploring this awesome country! But first, I still need you to meet my “green dragon” before I can actually start exploring – stay tuned.