The north-eastern Free State Province is home to Golden Gate Highlands National Park. The location was named for the sandstone cliffs that have a golden glow when reflecting sun rays, especially late in the day. We saw a great deal of incredible scenery plus a variety of animals and colorful birds during our first visit to this park. 

Peaks and Plains – The landscape of Golden Gate Highlands includes mountains, woodlands, open plains of grassland, and standstone cliffs. We stayed in one of the eight log cabins perched on a high mountain in the park with gorgeous views of the Maluti Mountains in the distance. 

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Unlike Karoo and Mokala, this national park includes many places to hike. We spent a beautiful, sunny day hiking on several of the trails around the bases and to the tops of sandstone cliffs, as well as into a rock canyon with a small waterfall.

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Four Legs – Most of the animals we spotted in the park were in the antelope family. But we did see a few plains zebra and black-backed jackals as well. 

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Two legs– A common stop for park visitors is the vulture hide, designed for monitoring, reporting, researching, and photographing the birds without disturbing them. Local farmers donate carcasses for attracting and feeding the vultures. We went to the hide several times at different hours of day. Unfortunately we didn’t see the rare bearded vulture, but we photographed two or three Cape vultures plus a couple of black-backed jackals looking for food.

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Most of the photos below were taken on the porch or within 5 meters of our log cabin accommodations. At times it was hard to keep up with taking pictures of all the different types of birds near us.

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