Slightly smaller than the US state of Pennsylvania, with a total area of 106 512 square kilometres is the North West Province .Nestled in the north of South Africa on the Botswana border, fringed by the Kalahari desert in the west, Gauteng province to the east, and the Free State to the south.. It is known as the Platinum Province for the wealth of the metal it has underground. Mmabatho. Potchefstroom and Klerksdorp are the biggest cities in the province with Brits and Rustenburg as two of the main towns.
It is the country's fourth-smallest province, taking up 8.7% of South Africa's land area and with a mid-2006 population of 3.4-million people.
Two-thirds of the people speak Setswana, the language of neighbouring Botswana, with the rest speaking Afrikaans and isiXhosa. The landscape is largely flat regions of scattered trees and grassland. The Magaliesberg mountain range in the northeast extends about 130 kilometres from Pretoria to Rustenburg.
A summer-rainfall region, temperatures range from up to 31°C in summer to as little as 3°C in winter.
The crater of a long extinct volcano and the result of eruptions some 1,200 million years ago makes it one of the largest volcanic complexes of its type in the world, the rare rock types and formations make it a unique geological feature. A number of rare minerals occur in the region. The scenic terrain lies in the transition zone between Klalahari and Lowveld, and both types of vegetation are found here. As a result of the park being on a trasition zone there are overlaps in mammals, birds and vegetation. A rich array of southern African wildlife including lion, elephant, white and black rhino, cape buffalo,leopard, zebra, hyenas, cheetah, hippo and crocodiles had been reintroduction. Over 360 bird species were counted.
