Life, but not as I've known it

With little time for further rest we soon head out on the road again. Like yesterday when we arrived at the sanctuary and were quickly out on a truck walking with cheetahs, today we waste no time and jump into the pack of an open-air truck (at least with seats this time) and head off to the cheetah enclosure. It's the first time we see the scale of the landscape. So far we've either been in the sanctuary and not seeing much beyond the immediate bush, or in a car where everything was at a distance from the road. Here we are finally in the landscape and it's unlikely anything I've seen before. Huge rock strewn plains, like a Martian plateau, are ringed, in the distance (and it's difficult to gauge how far) by table-top mountains. It's like we've been dropped on to the set of a sci-fi movie. But for a few plants, I might expect to see the Opportunity rover chugging along round a lifeless boulder.