Information: Highveld

The award winning resort at Badplaas has a superb Hydro Spa set in a game reserve in warm Mpumalanga. The resort has 37 hotel rooms but is primarily self-catering with almost 150 log cabins and chalets, and nearly 300 caravan and camping stands. A wide range of leisure activities is available. Other guest house accommodation is also available in the area.

The resort offers a variety of facilities on-site such as The Hydro Spa, supermarket, restaurant, hotel dining room, hydro coffee shop and a bikini bar.

In the late 19th Century there was an important wagon route from Johannesburg to the gold fields of the Kaap Valley in the East. Farmers in the area that was to become Carolina decided to establish a town as a stopover for wagon trains, and one of them, C.J.Coetzee offered them a portion of his farm providing the town was named after his wife. Carolina was duly established in 1882 and named after her. The town was proclaimed in 1885. The village was totally destroyed during the 2nd Anglo-Boer War and was later rebuilt. There are some good examples of sandstone architecture in Carolina's public buildings.

Carolina has a number of perfect examples of the spectacular sandstone architecture, especially in the public buildings and also boasts examples of San Rock art which can be viewed and explored.

The small hamlet of Chrissiesmeer is the centre of South Africa's largest lake district with some 270 lakes and pans located with­in a 20 km radius of the village. The largest, Lake Chrissie , was named after President M. W. Pretorius's talented daughter Christina.

The region was an important staging point on the early wagon routes to Delagoa Bay and it was from here that the first tsetse fly free route to the coast was mapped and surveyed. In the town of Chrissiesmeer today, Clarke's Shop, which was once owned by such notables as Simmer and Jack of Germiston mining fame, is now over a hundered years old. With the opening of the rail link between Delagoa Bay and Pretoria the growth of the area became limited to farming and forestry for which it is now well known. A new drive to promote tourism will restore the area to a rightful position of importance. The people of the grasslands will ensure that your stay is a memorable one and that you will return to this beautiful corner of Mpumalanga.

Ermelo is the educational, industrial and commercial centre. Mixed farming and anthracite, coal and torbanite mining take place here. Ermelo is the crossroads of three national highways, N2, N11 and the N17, only Pretoria & Johannesburg are crossed by more.
Ruins of a settlement dating 1400 are found in the area while Ermelo itself was founded by Dutch Reformed Church Reverend Frans Cachet who was converted to Christianity in the town of Ermelo in the Netherlands. The town was reduced to a single standing home by the British during the Second Boer War.