Makgadikgadi Pans National Park

The Makgadikgadi Pans are the remnants of an ancient super-lake — Lake Makgadikgadi — which is estimated to have been larger than Switzerland before it dried up some 10,000 years ago. Today, the pans represent one of the world's most otherworldly landscapes: vast, flat expanses of cracked salt and soda ash extending to the horizon in every direction, where mirages shimmer and the silence is absolute.

The Makgadikgadi Pans National Park (2,600 sq km) encompasses the western portion of this extraordinary basin, adjacent to the Ntwetwe Pan. It protects a diversity of ecosystems beyond the pans themselves, including palm-studded grasslands, mopane scrub, and riverine vegetation along the Boteti River on the park's western boundary. The Boteti River, which flows intermittently from the Okavango, is a critical dry-season refuge for wildlife, drawing massive herds of zebra and wildebeest.

The Makgadikgadi is famous for one of Africa's great wildlife spectacles — the annual zebra migration, described as the second-largest in Africa after the Serengeti's wildebeest migration. When the rains come (November to April), tens of thousands of Burchell's zebra and wildebeest flood onto the nutrient-rich grasses of the pans' edges. Lions, cheetahs, and wild dogs follow in their wake, creating extraordinary predator-prey interactions.

The park is also an exceptional destination for meerkats, with several habituated meerkat families near San Island that visitors can observe at sunrise as they emerge to warm themselves. The Makgadikgadi's vast open spaces also make it one of the best places in southern Africa for quad biking on the salt pans and riding horses through floodplains.