Etosha Pan — The Great White Place

The Etosha Pan is one of the most extraordinary landscapes on Earth: a 5,000 km² flat, blindingly white salt desert that was once a vast inland lake fed by the Kunene River. When the ancient lake dried millions of years ago it left a pan so saline that virtually nothing grows on it — yet it is a magnet for wildlife. In the dry season animals converge from hundreds of kilometres around to drink at the waterholes on its edges; in rare good rainfall years the pan fills with a shallow sheet of water that supports hundreds of thousands of flamingos. The shimmering white surface creates mirages, distorts horizons and produces some of the most surreal wildlife photography conditions in Africa.