There's a picture you have in your head. It's of a dry, barren strip of baking desert. Beat-up bakkies, rusty caravan parks, perhaps; folks idling under the killer sun in sweat-wet white vests; sheep pilfering shards of pockmarked grass from cracked pavements.
Certainly, Upington has the extreme heat It's a hotness intense enough that some European vehicle manufacturers come here to conduct climate tests on new cars — they park next-season models here for extended periods and then drive them around to see how they perform. Plus, there's the seemingly futuristic Khi Solar One energy generation plant that produces a frightening bright white glow all day — if you're not expecting it, you'll assume a UFO is hovering in the desert.
