Sossusvlei

Sossusvlei is usually taken to mean the red dune area of the Namib-Naukluft National Park which lies in the southern part of the Namib Desert, Namibia. Although there is an actual salt and clay pan called “Sossusvlei”. If you do a search in Google Images on “Namibia”, a lot of the images that are displayed come […]

Tirasberg

After leaving the arid and rocky south around the Fish River Canyon, we started heading north towards the red dune area of Sossusvlei. On our way we stopped off in the Tirasberg. We turned north from the Keetmanshoop – Lüderitz road, and on to the Tiras Plain, located between the Rooirand (Escarpment) and the south eastern foothills of […]

Weekly Photo Challenge: Transmogrify

This week’s challenge is around the word “Transmogrify” which essentially means to transform “something in appearance or form, especially strangely or grotesquely“. I did not have anything grotesque to show, but here in the southern hemisphere we have just gone from winter into early summer and the trees in our front yard went through a […]

Solitaire: Apple pie in the desert

Solitaire is a small settlement in the Khomas Region of central Namibia near the Namib-Naukluft National Park. We came upon it while driving from the red dune area of Sossusvlei to Walvis Bay at the coast. The main settlement is very small – it has a petrol station, post office, a bakery and a general […]

The Quiver Tree Forest and Giant’s Playground

Thirteen kilometres north-east of Keetmanshoop, on the farm Gariganus, is a huge Quiver Tree (Afrikaans name: Kokerboom) forest. This is not what one usually thinks of as a “forest”, but it is an amazing collection of approximately 250 Aloe dichotoma  plants. These are tall (up to 7 meters or 23 feet tall), tree-like aloes which grow in the […]

Gondwana Canyon Village

When I was a child and our family visited Namibia, we just packed our camper van and camping gear, left Cape Town one morning and headed north for the border. That seemed fine in those days and we mostly found a place to stay for the night. Although I do remember us all having to […]

Geckos

Wherever ones goes in Namibia there are geckos – the real ones (Namibia has 12 families of gecko), and the decorative ones.  Geckos are a type of lizard with some really unique features. Firstly, the noise they make to communicate with other geckos is unique to this type of lizard. In fact the English word “gecko” originates […]

Fish River Canyon: Third time’s a charm

Our first stop once we had crossed the border into Namibia, was at a camp near the Fish River Canyon. The Fish River Canyon is the largest canyon in Africa, and one of the most popular tourist destinations in Nambia. The canyon is “in total about 160 km (100 miles) long, up to 27 km (17 miles) […]

Two Books: “It’s me, Anna” by Elbie Lötter & “Dead Before Dying” by Deon Meyer

I have recently read two books, both by South African authors, that I would like to share. Both books were originally written and published in Afrikaans, so if you can speak Afrikaans I would suggest reading them in the original language. Afrikaans is such a descriptive language that it does not translate as powerfully into […]

WPC: Shine – Blue Glow

These huge “Blue Bottles” (or Portuguese man o’ war marine organisms) washed up on the Witsand beach after days of intense South-Easter (onshore wind) blowing. In the soft late afternoon sun, they shone with a beautiful blue glow. This post is part of the Daily Post | Weekly Photo Challenges | Shine It is also […]