An initial assessment by the Limpopo Tourism and Parks Board indicates that last week's influx of eclipse hunters from all parts of the world gave the province's tourism industry a huge boost.

The week was marked by an unbelievable concentration of people inside the Kruger National Park, where the infrastructure was stretched to its limits. The fact that such a large part of the Kruger National Park adjoins the province's eastern boundary is clearly a factor which will play an important role in future tourism strategies.

However, park officials were full of praise for the patience and exemplary behaviour of thousands of tourists, who created a carnival atmosphere at the Mopani, Shingwedzi and Punda Maria tourist camps on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Festival programmes in Musina and Phalaborwa received only moderate public support, as most visitors chose to view the phenomenon from vantage points in nature.

Although cloudy weather threatened to obscure the solar spectacle, the clouds parted in time at several places, to afford the excited crowds some excellent viewing. Traditional dancing and colourful craft stalls in the camps aroused great interest among foreign visitors after the event.

Traffic in the park was heavy on both days, and honorary rangers had to double as traffic controllers, to keep vehicles moving through the camps. Overnight coach parties arrived from Skukuza, in the south, to swell the crowds on Wednesday morning.

Thousands of visitors made full use of the designated viewing sites along the park's main route to the north, and the sight of hundreds of visitors out of their cars was totally unprecedented. A number of roadside refreshment kiosks, operated by private enterprise, proved to be very popular, as they also served as social meeting places.

A park official at Punda Maria said the northern camps had never been so congested before. Scores of tourists were accommodated in rustic bush camps, and many slept in their cars, in order to get an uninterrupted early start on Wednesday morning.

The eclipse experience formed a part of many package tours, which also took visitors to Cape Town, Botswana and the Victoria Falls.