Page 63 - Discover Botswana 24th Edition 2024

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The Okavango Delta is frequently described as a place
where rivers terminate in the desert. It is known as a
‘delta’ however, and not its more accurate description as
an alluvial fan, because its rivers once terminated in a
lake. A lake so large it enveloped Makgadikgadi, Nxai pan
and half of the central Kalahari Game Reserve. The lake
is long-gone, but the memory of its existence still dominates the dryland
landscape of the Kalahari and the ecosystems that lie within it.
LANDSCAPE OF MEMORY
This is misfit land where the imprint of the past still looms large in the
landscape. Giant shorelines, visible from space, formerly belonging to
mega lake Makgadikgadi now fence in the shallow remnants of seasonal
puddles that eventually evaporate into a poppadom-like crust of salty
clay. The Boteti, whose huge channel margins, equivalent in size to the
Okavango, guides a dwindling trickle of water towards the relic lakebed
as the floodwater seeps slowly into the sand between hopeful hippo pools.
In the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, another shoreline from an even
older lake, so large it would have covered an area similar in size to Senegal,
separates an ancient field of transverse dunes from the sinuous lagoonal
ripple marks of the long-gone lakebed now overprinted with fossil rivers
including the Deception, Passage and Okwa systems that last flowed at
least 17 thousand years ago. The enormity of the landscape and the
timeframe in which it was shaped is both humbling and hard to get one’s
head around. This is the sump of the system, the end of the line for the
rivers flowing from the north and the former home of one of the largest
bodies of water on earth.
Previous pages: Water is life and life revolves around waterholes such as this
one in Nxai Pan National Park. Often, bull elephants will congregate around
the pan to socialize and to use the cooling mud to stave off the searing
temperatures of the Kalahari.
Facing page: Many animals living out life in the Kalahari are dry adapted relying
less so on water at times. Cheetah, for example, will obtain moisture from their
kills. In this instance, a cheetah uses her speed and agility to successfully bring
down a springbok.
KA L A H A R I