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About
walking and hiking in the Dome/Vaal area
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Pick your level of difficulty and
effort
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Use Otters' Haunt as your base and
get directions for self-guided walks
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Interpretative guiding includes the
Vredefort Dome, river ecology, battlefields and
archaeology
The ground
ranges from the rocky and steeply rugged Bergland (inner rim
of the
blast crater)
to the gently sloping grassland of the Inlandsee (a large
saltpan near the centre of the crater), with enchanting
islands and rocky granite hills in-between. Also, each trail
has several historical and archaeological points of
interest. There are old gold mining tunnel shafts in the
Bergland, and there are 1000-year old ash middens of ancient
Tswana settlements in the Bergland heights. Down along the
river, some 300 islands mark the course of the Vaal, and
here Boer snipers would hide in a game of cat-and-mouse as
they sought to pick off British soldiers crossing the Vaal.
At a shallow ford not far below Otters' Haunt, the TV series
"Rhodes" was filmed - the Vaal representing the Limpopo,
with the boulder-strewn hills in the vicinity representing the Matopos.
You can pick and choose the length and
difficulty of your hike or recreational walk. Using Otters'
Haunt as the base, sally forth into the fields and hills to
explore this fascinating area. Ask at Reception for trail
notes and guiding. The map reflects only trails close to
Otters' Haunt - there are more, eg at Heilbron, 1 hour's
drive away, to visit the Vegkop Voortrekker-Matabele
battlefield and museum, walk the ground, climb the koppie
and see the corbelled stone huts of the mysterious Ghoya
people.
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