An often bleak ad forbidding country, its shimmering spaces spread out beneath an unrelenting, hot and metallic sky, it seduces the visitor and those living in its town and villages with a disarming lack of pretension hiding an embarrassing wealth of natural and mineral riches. Or between the simple weep of its horizon and the clean, spherical arc of its deep blue sky, visitors will find historical town and villages, the easy-going charm of the country and an always-warm welcome. Today, he Kalahari is one to 40 raptor and vulture species (of 67 species in South Africa) and seven owl species (of 12 species nationally). Beneath the clean sweep of our uncluttered horizon, not far beneath the Kalahari’s great blanket of red sands, hides a treasure trove of iron, manganese and other precious ores.

Though the mechanized giants of the open-cast mining industry have gouged great, gaping wounds in the desert floor, they have – with all the modern technology at their disposal – only dented the surface of its enormous wealth. In towns like Black Rock, Hotazel and Dingleton the mechanical behemoths will continue to harvest nature’s mineral wealth for decades to come. And, each day, in an exuberant display of superabundance, millions of litres of crystalline, mineral rich water pour into this arid landscape.

Flowing from an amazing dolomite spring as strongly and as steadily as if he 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.