Kalahari Desert

The Kalahari Desert is a large, semi-desert in southern Africa, covering large parts of Botswana and Namibia. It sits on the region's interior plateau, with an average elevation of 3,000 feet above sea level. The San bushmen have lived in the Kalahari for up to 20,000 years. Theirs is the desert culture depicted in the 1980 film The Gods Must be Crazy.

Though nominally a desert, the Kalahari supports diverse wildlife, thanks to variable rains in the winter and spring, and a swampy region at its northern end. It contains the Central Kalahari Game Reserve—the second-largest in the world—with antelope, lions, hyenas and giraffes. The most famous of the region's wildlife, however, may be its meerkats, due to the success of Animal Planet's Meerkat Manor, filmed on-location in the Kalahari.