Bela-Bela and the Hot Springs

A Hot Spring The Tswana Named Bela Bela, The Boiling Place, Which Delivers Some Millions Of Litres A Day At Around Fifty Degrees And Which The Whole Town Was Built On And Around Now Developed Into A Large Resort Of Pools, Slides And Hotels Rather Than Anything Natural, An Hour From Pretoria And Busy With South African Families For Most Of The Year · Bela-Bela, Limpopo

The Tswana name for this place means the boiling place, which is a reasonable description of several million litres a day of water arriving at the surface at around fifty degrees. People have been coming to the spring for a very long time; a settlement grew around it from 1873 under the name Warmbaths, the railway reached it, and the whole town is now built on and around the water. Be clear what that means in practice. This is not a natural pool in a quiet valley: the springs feed a large commercial resort of swimming pools, waterslides, hotels and timeshare, it is an hour from Pretoria on the N1, and for most of the year it is full of South African families having exactly the kind of holiday it is built for. On those terms it works well, and it is the only hot-springs row in this entire set. The Waterberg starts just north of the town, which is the better reason to be in this part of Limpopo at all.

On the N1 in southern Limpopo below the Waterberg, 100 km north of Pretoria, Bela-Bela, Limpopo, South Africa

THE RESORT POOL COMPLEXES keep long daily hours with day-visitor entry as well as residents' access, and they are busiest in school holidays and at weekends when they fill completely. THIS IS A DEVELOPED RESORT RATHER THAN A NATURAL SPRING - pools, slides, hotels and timeshare, with the thermal water piped into them - and the row says so because the word springs leads people to expect otherwise. There are several separate resorts and day rates differ; a hot mineral bath complex is usually priced apart from the waterslide side. The town has fuel, supermarkets, banks and a great deal of accommodation. Game lodges in the surrounding bushveld are a separate thing. It is 100 km from Pretoria on the N1, and MALARIA-FREE at this altitude.

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