The sundrenched Kalahari, with its ancient, undulating landscape and endless horizons, evokes memories of a land before time. Its shimmering spaces spread out beneath an unrelenting, hot and metallic sky, it seduces the visitor and those living in its towns and villages with a disarming lack of pretension hiding an embarrassing wealth of natural and mineral riches.
Beneath the Kalahari's great blanket of red sands, hides a treasure trove of iron, manganese and other precious ores. Although the mechanised giants of the open-cast mining industry have gouged gaping wounds in the desert floor, they have only dented the surface of its enormous wealth.
Today, the Kalahari is home to 40 raptor and vulture species (of 67 species in South Africa) and seven owl species (of 12 species nationally). The red sands also support a vast selection of game farms which are plentiful with wildlife and hardy unusual plants. And, each day, in a display of superabundance, millions of litres of crystalline, mineral rich water pours into this arid landscape.
Flowing from an amazing dolomite spring as strongly and as steadily as if the rock had been struck by Moses, the beautiful Eye of Kuruman feeds forests of majestically tall camelthorn trees silhouetted against the seamless horizon of the great, mystical and miraculous Kalahari desert.
Towns in the Kalahari Region:
