Tswaing Meteorite Crater

Tswaing is one of the better-preserved small impact craters on earth: a meteorite around fifty metres across struck here roughly 220,000 years ago, leaving a bowl about 1.13 kilometres wide and a hundred metres deep. Groundwater and rain have filled the floor with a shallow salt lake, and that lake is why the site has a human history - the name means place of salt in Setswana, and communities collected soda and salt from it for a very long time, with archaeological evidence of use going back many thousands of years. A commercial soda works operated in the twentieth century and its ruins are still on the crater floor. A seven-kilometre trail runs from the visitor centre around the rim and down to the lake and back, through bushveld with birds and small game. It is an easy half day from Pretoria and gets very few visitors.

History

Middle Stone Age tools show that people came to the crater to hunt and gather salt as far back as 100,000 years ago, and Tswana and Sotho people harvested its salt between 1200 and 1800. Brine was pumped from the floor from 1912 to 1956, and in 1990 a borehole core settled that it is an impact crater (Wikipedia, Tswaing crater).

What you'll find

• The impact bowl - 1.13 kilometres wide, made by a meteorite about 220,000 years ago.
• The salt lake - a shallow soda lake on the crater floor.
• The soda works ruins - twentieth-century industrial remains among an ancient salt tradition.
• The rim trail - a seven-kilometre loop down to the lake and back.

When to go

April to September - summer on the crater floor is very hot. Half a day.

What to expect

The climb back out of the crater is hot work with no shade. Facilities are limited and the visitor centre has had periods of neglect. The lake is salt and not swimmable. Access roads pass through busy townships; ordinary care applies.

Nearby

Pretoria is south; the Dinokeng reserve is north-east.

Key facts