salt pans & flood lands

sometimes the unexpected sights are the most beautiful ones 

if you google " Makgadikgadi salt pans" [assuming you can spell it right! jk. I've done the hard work for you, just click] you will find images of a cracked white landscape and barren earth with no end in sight. We visited the Salt Pans right at the tail end of a particularly rainy season though. Moreover, the days before our arrival it rained so hard that many of the roads leading to the pans were flooded. We weren't even sure if we would make it. But the rains held off just long enough for us to see the Salt Pans in a very different light. 

forget desolation, they were teeming with new greenery, grasses swaying in the wind, puddles rippling in our jeep's wake... we even stopped to watch the sunset and for all intents and purposes it appeared that we were standing at the edge of an ocean, not in the middle of a landlocked country looking out over what was supposed to be a wasteland. 

^^ this is probably my favorite picture! I just can't describe how oddly calming it was to be rumbling over the flooded lands with the blue clouds reflected in the water and a soft wake trailing behind us. 

^^ my ponytail game was on point that day! jk. wild, wind-swept hair for the win.

cotton candy clouds ^

  

water truly is the essence of life, I will probably say it about 110x more throughout the course of my Africa Safari recaps, but I am just so in awe of nature's beauty and ingenuity! What a world.