Kalahari

In the middle of the country, lies the Kalahari region. It has been mistakenly called a desert when it is not a desert at all. In fact it’s a vast sand sheet, a fossil mine, now largely covered in bushes, trees and grasses.

In the middle of the northern Kalahari, lies a complex of huge but flat salt pans. It’s a harsh landscape but it offers an isolation as complete as anywhere in Southern Africa, and a wealth of hidden treasures for those adventurous types. It is a very photogenic landscape.

To the east of the Kalahari is the great Makgadikgadi Pans, covering about 10,000 sq kms of the Kalahari, where it’s a large salt landscape. Some of the pans are enormous; others are the size of a small duck-pond. Around these are rolling grasslands and occasional picturesque palm-tree island.

Animals that live in the region include brown hyenas, the Kalahari lion, meerkats, giraffes, common warthogs, jackals, chacma baboons, and several species of antelope (including the eland, gemsbok, springbok, hartebeest, steenbok, kudu, and duiker), and many species of birds and reptiles.