Kimberley is a prospecting City famous for its quality diamonds, the largest man-made excavation in the World and various other impressive tourists attractions! It is the Capital City of the Northern Cape and surrounded by five of South Africa's big rivers, two of them being the Orange and Vaal Rivers.
Kimberley has an average of 9 and a half hours of sunshine per day, throughout the Year and receive an annual rainfall of about 450mm. Kimberley is situated almost in the centre of South Africa between Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Surrounding Kimberley are many memorials and sites of some important battles of the Anglo-Boer war, most notably the 'Siege of Kimberley', in 1899 with the famous "Long Cecil" on display, and the battlefield site of Magersfontein where Boers used trench warfare for the first time.
The city boasts other firsts like: 'The first city in the Southern Hemisphere to install electric street lighting and the first city in South Africa to switch to an automatic exchanges, and it housed the country's first Stock Exchange.'
Kimberley's Vintage Tram Service operates daily between 09:00 and 16:15. This transports visitors between the City Hall and the Big Hole and Kimberly Mine Museum. On route visitors are treated to some of the city's Historical and noteworthy sites, while the tram also stops outside; the 'Star of the West', the oldest pub in Kimberley. - "During the Diamond Digging days, Kimberley was renowned for the variety and number of its bars. It is said that during the peak of the diamond rush Kimberley had more pubs than pharmacies and churches. This was partly due to a shortage of natural surface water, but mostly, one would suspect, to a diggers taste for beer or something stronger! Social life in Kimberley was as hectic as the frantic search for diamonds and many a digger celebrated a large find or drowned his diamond digging sorrows in these pubs. Today a few of these romantic establishments from a bygone age still exist and they flourish alongside newer more modern bars and restaurants. This tour revisits some of these old establishments still standing today."
