Makgadikgadi Pans Game Reserve includes a portion of the 12000 sq km (4600 sq mile) Makgadikgadi Pans, which is the size of Portugal. Once these pans were one of the world's largest prehistoric lakes, they dried up only 10,000 years ago due to continual shifting of the earth's crust and formed the Pans of today - salt plains covered with grasslands and isolated "islands" of vegetation, baobab and palm trees.
The pans are nearly devoid of human habitation and give one the feeling of true isolation though man has been around these parts from time immemorial. There are Bushman hunting shelters and sacred sites and the shorelines of Makgadikgadi are littered with archaeological relics including stone age tools. Even when the waters finally receded and left these shallow depressions of saline clay and silt to catch the sparse summer rain, the rich herds of wildlife - zebra, wildebeest, eland, gemsbok, springbok, hartebeest - would ebb and flow across the plains in their ceaseless pursuit of water and grazing, drawing their inevitable following of carnivores - lion, cheetah, leopard, wild dog, hyena - and of course the early hunters. It is not an uncommon sight to see game, far out on the pans eating the mineral-rich silt, as if up to their knees in water as the heat shimmers a mirage across the surface of the pans.
The bird life is a specialist's dream - white backed and lappet faced vultures, bateleur, ostrich, kori bustard, black korhaan and bronze winged courser, four species of sand grouse and a startling variety of larks. In the wet season flamingos, pelicans, avocet and a huge range of ducks move into the area.
