Ai-Ais Richtersveld

The Ai-Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park is a remarkable cross-border conservation area spanning the lower Orange River valley between South Africa and Namibia, with the South African component — the Richtersveld National Park — covering approximately 1,624 square kilometers in the Northern Cape. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007, the Richtersveld is recognized for its exceptional botanical diversity and as a living cultural landscape shaped by the semi-nomadic Nama people. The park protects one of the most extreme and dramatically beautiful mountain desert landscapes in southern Africa, with rugged peaks rising to 1,377 meters, deep gorges carved by the Orange River, and an extraordinary concentration of succulent plant species found nowhere else on Earth.