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. It’s a semi arid desert, not a totally dry desert.
While the Kalahari Desert is called a desert, it isn’t a true desert. 250 millimeters of rain falls in some areas. However, the rain is sporadic, so it’s called a desert. It’s known as either place without water or great thirst by the people in Africa.
The Kahalari Desert wasn’t always a sandy, dry place. There was once a lake there. The lake covered a huge area, 80 thousand square kilometers. The combined size of all the great lakes is 244,000 square kilometers. Makgadikgadi was about as large as the largest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior. 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! If was as high as 149°F out in the sunlight. As hot as it was during the day, it was cold at night. At lowest, the Survivorman had to sleep in 44F cold. If that he doesn’t get you, the cold will.
It’s important to stay hydrated when you’re in the Kalahari Desert. That’s generally true. But when it’s 140°F it’s even more critical. The survivor man did not have enough water. He resorted to every trick in the book to get some of this important resource. One was to create a urine still, where he could capture all the water from his urine. Okay then. 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. Even the survivor man wouldn’t have lasted much longer.
Living isn’t easy in the Kalahari Desert. Would you want to go there?
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