The Jewel of the Kalahari
It is one of the places most fascinating and perplexing in the black continent, where the water meets the sand of the Kalahari desert forming a small universe of unique and extraordinary wildlife.
From the highlands of Angola, the Okavango river run soft before dying in the Kalahari desert, more than a thousand miles away. This exceptional event is what makes its delta one of the most amazing and extraordinary in Africa.
Is an oasis in the arid territory. The subtropical periodic rains cause flooding of the river Cubango of central Angola, Namibia at the name of Kuvango river and finally entering Botswana as the Okavango River in Mohembo, in the north. These floods reach about 11 billion cubic meters of water each year that drain the great delta of 15000 km2 through a maze of lagoons, canals and islands before disappearing into the sands of the Kalahari Desert, in southern.
The delta is divided between a permanently flooded area in the north and a seasonally flooded area in the south. The northern area contains riverside forest immediately adjacent to shore arid Kalahari woodlands. The area seasonally flooded have large deciduous trees.
These different habitats are given the opportunity to develop a wildlife and vegetation surprisingly varied and rich in species of mammals, birds and amphibians, and a wide range of different plant species.
In the northwest of Delta, 60 km short of the border with Namibia is Tsodilo Hills, famous for its sacred character for the Khoisan, with over 350 sites with rock paintings, some as curious as the zebra which appears in the Botswana's national emblem, or paintings of whales and penguins that suggest contact between Khisas and other coastal towns almost a thousand miles distant.
The Okavango Delta in Botswana, is considered one of the last paradises left on Earth. There, a rich variety of organisms living in natural balance in a landscape that is not very different from that in which the first living beings evolved for four or five million years. But all is not well in Eden. Agriculture invasive, water diversion, pests and pollution threatens the microcosm in principle virgin: it is the same attacks.