TOURIST INFORMATION
Kalahari Tourist Office (Kuruman)
Main Street, Kuruman
Tel 053 712 1001
Fax 053 712 2502
E-mail info@kalahari.org.za
Web www.roaringkalahari.co.za
Cities/Towns: Black Rock, Dibeng, Dingleton, Hotazel, Kathu, Kuruman, Van Zylsrus.
An often bleak and forbidding country, its shimmering spaces spread out beneath an unrelenting, hot and metallic sky, it seduces the visitors and those living in its towns and villages with a disarming lack of pretension hiding an embarrassing wealth of natural and mineral riches, for between the simple sweep of its horizon and the clean, spherical arc of its deep blue sky, visitors will find historical towns and villages, the easy-going charm of the country and an always-warm welcome.
Today, the Kalahari is home to 40 raptor and vulture species (of 67 species in South Africa) and seven owl species (of 12 species nationally). Beneath the clean sweep of our uncluttered horizon, not far beneath the Kalahari's great blanket of red sands, hides a treasure trove of iron, manganese and other precious ores. Through the mechanized giants of the open-cast mining industry have gouged great, gaping wounds in desert floor, they have - with all the modern technology at their disposal - only dented the surface of its enormous wealth. In towns like Black Rock, Hotazel and Dingleton, the mechanical behemoths will continue to harvest nature's mineral wealth for decades to come. And each day, in an exuberant display of superabundance, millions of liters of crystalline, mineral rich water pour into this arid landscape. Flowing from an amazing dolomite spring as strongly and as steadily as if the rock had been struck by Moses, the beautiful Eye of Kuruman feeds forests of majestically tall camel thorn trees silhouetted against the seamless horizon of the great, mystical and miraculous Kalahari Desert.