For much of the year, most of Namaqualand is hot, dry, dusty and all but dead.
The 48,000 sq. km expanse, which stretches northward from the Olifants River up to the lower reaches of the Orange River in South Africa's Northern Cape Province, is virtually uninhabited.
The few towns there are small, mainly moribund, dusty little places separated from one another by miles of silent and mesmerizing, deserted road. Author Laurens van der Post described this lonely place as a country of "farms hidden behind rare puritanical hills guarding secret water, appearing totally unpeopled."