Namibia was a revelation. Even though we had always wanted to go there to see amazing landscapes, I was still astounded at how amazing the landscapes were. Continually different, continually amazing! Also, it became very clear why there is a sun image in the Namibia flag. Even sunnier than Maputo! We started from the south, driving up from the town of Springbok in SA and having a picnic lunch and a dip in the hot-springs heated pool at Ai-Ais (the place of burning water), and the end of the five-day Fish River Canyon hike, which someday I would like to come back to do in its entirety. You could say that here was the resort of lost companions waiting with heated pool and bar, but of course we were not stopping there. We drove out to see the canyon from the top and camped at Hobas, near the starting point of the canyon hike. Next day on the drive to the quaint German costal town of Luderitz we stopped to see the wild desert horses of the Koichab Pan. These horses are descended from farm and army and former aristocrat horses that escaped or were abandoned around the time of the first World War. Around 200 of them currently roam in the desert, finding grass where they can and visiting a waterhole installed to help ensure their survival. Starkly beautiful.
The other "highlight" of that drive was the thousands of huge armoured crickets we saw (and squished) on the tar road. Every squished cricket becomes lunch for another cricket in a grizzly yet somehow sustainable cycle. In case you are wondering how we could see dark bugs on a black tar road, they are each about two inches long and an inch tall. Fantastically creepy.
At Luderitz we camped at the lovely but windy Shark Island, but the best part of this stop was a visit to the nearby ghost town of Kolmanskop, a former diamond-mining centre abandoned about 50 years ago and slowly being reclaimed by the desert since the mining has shifted to offshore dredging. A photographer's dream, and dramatic living proof of the second law of thermodynamics -- that all things inevitable trend from order to disorder (as demonstrated in this exact place by Brian Cox in the BBC's Wonders of the Universe series - see the link below in my last guest post beside the Namibia flag).
Seisreim and Sossusvlei are were really the place Neil Young must have been thinking of where the pavement turned to sand. We had unbelievable views during a morning balloon ride -- of the shadow of the earth on space (the dark blue line at the base of the sky in the first photo below) as well as of the dunes that reach 85km to the sea -- and the most scenic breakfast picnic ever. Dead Vlei was another photographer's heaven, with the dunes and the salt pan and the tree skeletons and the blue sky providing near-endless combinations of entrancing colour and shape and shadow.
The next day was a mind-bogglingly beautiful drive that felt strangely like southern Alberta and had me singing Ian Tyson and KD Lang in my head. Warm dry air, rolling grass-covered hills, mountain backdrops, vast blue skies, and cows everywhere, and even a western-style one-horse town called Solitaire. A prairie girl could sink some roots in a place like this. I really felt at home. Just like on trips back to Alberta, my hands and nose dried out and started to crack...
I will let Sam tell you about the adrenaline activities from our three-days in Swakopmund, and will skip ahead with a couple of images from the Skeleton Coast, including a decomposing shipwreck, the salt along the salt road, and the insane numbers of seals at Cape Cross (I don't think I have ever seen, or smelled, or heard) more animals in one place ever in my life), and then leave you with an image of the Etosha Pan, yet another distinct and amazing landscape in a land of stunning and diverse beauty. Visit Namibia folks. Plan for a month.
I will let Sam tell you about the adrenaline activities from our three-days in Swakopmund, and will skip ahead with a couple of images from the Skeleton Coast, including a decomposing shipwreck, the salt along the salt road, and the insane numbers of seals at Cape Cross (I don't think I have ever seen, or smelled, or heard) more animals in one place ever in my life), and then leave you with an image of the Etosha Pan, yet another distinct and amazing landscape in a land of stunning and diverse beauty. Visit Namibia folks. Plan for a month.