South Africa · ZA

Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve

Just 11 km south of the Johannesburg CBD, Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve is the city's biggest proclaimed wilderness and its best-kept green secret. Roughly 680 hectares of open grassland, rocky koppies (hills) and the slow Bloubos Spruit, the reserve earns its Afrikaans name — "stone river mountain" — and gives you a genuine feel for unspoilt Highveld veld without leaving the metro. It is a walking and birding haven first and foremost: a network of trails of up to nine kilometres threads across the hills, while the grasslands shelter plains game such as zebra, blesbok, black wildebeest and red hartebeest. On top of that, the reserve is an archaeological treasure chest, holding the highest concentration of identified Iron Age sites on the entire Witwatersrand, the ruins of an 1850 Voortrekker homestead, and even a battlefield corner of the Second Boer War.