Kalahari Desert
360,000 square miles in Africa are part of the Kalahari Desert. It’s a bit unique for a desert as in some places frequent rainfall results in lush vegetation. That is why this desert is considered a semi arid desert, unlike the Atacama Desert in which only about 1 millimeter of rain falls every year.
The Kalahari Desert isn’t technically a desert. Some parts of the desert receive about 250 mm of rain annually. It’s not regular or dependable rain, which gave the area its name. It’s known as either place without water or great thirst by the people in Africa.
The Kalahari Desert wasn’t always like this. There was once a lake there. The lake covered a huge area, 80 thousand square kilometers. By comparison all of the Great Lakes in the United States, five of them, cover about 244,000 square kilometers. The average depth was about 30 meters. The last of the lake drained about 10,000 years ago.
The Kalahari Desert was the site of an episode of survivor man in which the survival expert stayed there for six days. The temperature in the shade was nearly 108°F! In the sun it was as high as 149F. That’s a huge contrast to the temperatures at night. Cold in the neighborhood of 44°F. He didn’t know which one he liked less, the cold or the heat.
It’s important to stay hydrated when you’re in the Kalahari Desert. It’s necessary in normal places. It can become a matter of life and death in 140° Fahrenheit dry heat. Survivorman ran into a severe lack of water. He resorted to every trick in the book to get some of this important resource. He tried collecting water with a urine still. He knows best. He also found a few drops of water in the roots of plants that he chewed. In six days he was ready to return to civilization. There’s no doubt that even Les, trained and prepared in survival in harsh environments, would have died in only a few more days.
Living isn’t easy in the Kalahari Desert. Would you want to go there?
