Category: Namibia

Welcome back dear readers. When we left off, KT, Lisa and I were halfway through our trip around Namibia and had just arrived in the seaside resort town of Swakopmund on the Skeleton Coast. As promised, I saved the best for last!

After a nice dinner and a blissful night in an actual bed at a hotel in Swakopmund, Lisa decided to spend our free morning getting her hair highlighted, but KT and I were very focused on our goal: the Kristall Galerie, a smallish geology museum curated for Namibia’s multitude of rocks and minerals. We’d driven by it on the way to our hotel, saw the display of giant rocks outside, and were very anxious to get a closer look. We walked to the museum almost an hour before it opened, and thank goodness we did! The large specimens outside of the museum covered a host of rock types from Namibia, and we gleefully spent 45 minutes inspecting the rocks and having geogasms while shouting to each other about our finds.

Once the museum opened, we went inside for even more delights.  The displays were full of beautiful geologic wonders from around the country, evoking geogasm after geogasm with each new specimen. We oohed, aahed, discussed origin environments and processes for the minerals, and in general enjoyed ourselves to the point that when we left, we both felt like we needed a cigarette and a nap.

While at the museum, they had mentioned there was a Roadside Geology book for Namibia, so we stopped at a local bookstore and bought the last copy on our way back to the hotel. Our long drive that day had us crossing mountain passes with many more opportunities to exclaim over the geologic wonders of the region, as well as crossing the Tropic of Capricorn.

It turned out that KT and Lisa had actually purchased the Roadside Geology book as a birthday gift for me, and what a fantastic gift it was—now, instead of speculating on what we were seeing in the roadcuts, KT and I had a detailed description and could watch for inselbergs and other items of particular geogasmic interest, making the drive much more exciting than spending hours in a dusty truck bumping over dirt and gravel roads would normally be. My excitement was compounded because we were heading for another of my “must see” destinations in the country—the Namib Sand Sea, with its incredible star dunes and the Deadvlei immortalized on Instagram.

The Namib is one of the oldest deserts on earth, formed approximately 21 million years ago. The current star dune system is estimated to have been active for the past 5 million years, composed of gigantic dunes that create a star pattern when viewed from above. Our first foray into the area was to climb Dune 45 and watch the sunrise. It wasn’t an easy hike to the top, pitched at a 30 degree angle, balancing on a crest a foot wide, climbing up 278 feet of loose sand, but definitely worth it to watch the shadows and colors change as the sun rose. Once the sun was fully up, we took the much easier hike down to eat breakfast and appreciate the beauty of the area.

Then it was on to the Deadvlei (dead marsh) that was created when a dune migrated across the Tsauchab River and cut off the floodwaters that had previously sustained the vegetation. We were herded into bumpy, open 4WD vehicles for the ride to the trailhead, then turned loose. Thank goodness it was still early because it was already hot, and we had a hilly 1.5 km hike through loose sand to actually reach the vlei. It was worth every step to stand in a desiccated valley between dunes hundreds of feet tall and look at the few live (and more dead) trees framed by the gorgeous red sands while the sun moved shadows across the faces of the dunes.

I spent a lot of time experiencing geogasms while inspecting mud cracks and other features on the clay pan and taking pictures of the dunes, trees, and sand ripples from every possible angle. When our time was up I reluctantly made the long, hot hike back through the sand, but luckily had some time to sit and admire the dunes from the parking area while watching birds and other critters go about their business.

Our next destination was nearly as geogasmic as the dunes: Sesriem Canyon and one of the thickest conglomerate layers I’ve ever seen, lying nonconformably over metamorphic basement rocks. KT and I scrambled around the dry river bed, happily inspecting the cobbles that were eroding out of the conglomerate and looking for the barely exposed contact with the basement rocks while also cringing a little at the large chunks of rock that had come loose from the canyon walls overhead. We were thankful there hadn’t been any rain recently to increase the possibility of a new chunk falling on us.

Next was Aus, a former prisoner of war camp. We stayed in a beautiful cabin in a very isolated portion of the property with stunning views of the surrounding rocks. We were also able to drop our laundry with the camp so we wouldn’t spend the rest of the trip stinking up the truck. After a night in the cabin, it was off to another of my must-see destinations: the ghost town of Kolmanskop (Kolmannskuppe).

Developed as a diamond mining facility in 1908, it was the location of the first X-ray machine in the southern hemisphere, a power station, school, and even a bowling alley. The town was abandoned around 1928 when a large diamond deposit was discovered in another area. Today, the buildings still stand, but the dunes are doing what dunes do and covering everything with sand. It’s a striking place to visit, and I spent a lot of time taking pictures (of course).

Just past Kolmanskop on the way to Luderitz was another geogasmic marvel – textbook perfect crescent dunes! And all of you (non-geologists) just thought sand dunes were sand dunes, but nope – there are multiple kinds and we saw all of them while traveling through the home of the original geogasm.

The next stop, Luderitz, was superfluous in my opinion. There’s not much to the town, I don’t care about whatever Portuguese explorer stuck a cross in the ground, and the water on the beach we visited was really cold. The only saving grace was, you guessed it, more rocks! And some interesting critters on the beach, but mostly the rocks. On the way back from Luderitz we stopped to see the desert horses that live in the area. They were incredibly skinny, as one might imagine of mammals trying to live in a desert.

Then to another must-see: the Fish River Canyon. We saw so many interesting formations along the way, including pink shales and limestones. KT and I were giddy at the prospect of seeing them, as those rocks are not normally found in shades of pink. We kept our Roadside Geology book close, following the descriptions and having mini geogasms as we headed south.

For the geogasm finale, the Fish River Canyon itself! It’s comparable to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and though it’s somewhat smaller, it’s incredibly impressive. KT and I immediately piled out of the truck, taking our very slow and sweet time walking along the rim of the canyon, oohing and aahing and geogasming at every turn while we inspected the area. Hiking into the canyon is controlled by permit, so we only got to see it from the rim, but that didn’t diminish our awe at the beauty of the area and the geologic forces that shaped the canyon over millennia.

KT and I at the Fish River Canyon, Namibia’s equivalent to the Grand Canyon in the US

After several hours of delighted exploration, we got back in the truck to see another of Namibia’s endemic plant species, known as quiver trees. The trees are actually aloe plants, even though they grow in a shape like a tree, and they are quite impressive. Some are thought to be over 200 years old; we enjoyed a quick walk through the “forest” during a gorgeous sunset.

After one last night sleeping in the cold on very hard ground, we were up early to hit one last geogasm-inducing site: the Giant’s Playground. The area is an exposure of one of the biggest sills either of us has ever seen, and covered in the spheroidally weathered boulders often seen when intrusive volcanics are exposed at the surface. The regional joint sets visible in the rock only added to our wonder, and we spent a happy hour playing in the rocks before getting in the truck for our return trip to Windhoek.

And that, dear readers, is a quick summary of Namibia: Home of the Original Geogasm. Namibia is a beautiful country with lovely people and many marvelous plants and animals. But for geologists, life is a field trip—and this field trip was the most geogasmic I’ve ever taken.

P.S.

For those interested in things other than rocks, here’s a partial list of the wildlife we encountered on our trip. We tried to write it all down, but honestly, we were much more interested in adding geologic wonders to our trophy list than birds.

Dik dik	Waterbok	Egyptian ducks
Hydrax	Wildebeest	Vival birds
Oryx	Wild hare	White pelican
Impala	Hartbeest	White flamingos
Ostrich	Wild boar	Pink flamingos
Hippo	Mongoose	Peacock
Zebra	Termites	Guinea fowl
Lion	Giraffe	Weavers
Hyena	Fur Seals	Cape starlings
Jackel	Wild horses	Gray warbler
Elephant	Beetles	Pied crows
Rhino	Ants	Parakeets
Tembox	Vulture	Cormorants
Springbok	Secretary bird

Welcome back, Escape Hatch Fans! When we left off last time, Lisa, KT and I had arrived in Namibia and were just beginning our actual adventure. We’ll pick up with the trip on the first full day, after we finished assembling our tents and got the first inkling of the… quirks… of one particular travel companion.

After putting up our tents at the Mount Etjo campground, we went on our first game drive in the reserve. Since it was a fenced and managed area, we saw lots of animals, including elephants, rhinos, and a hippo. We also went to an observation area where the reserve feeds the lions. I’m not sure how I feel about this—it wasn’t enough food for a whole lion meal, so the feeding doesn’t stop the pride from engaging in their natural hunting behavior, but it does bring up some ethical problems in that the feeding teaches the lions there’s at least some food if they show up after dark in a certain spot with floodlights and lots of flash photography.

After the lion feeding, we went back to the tents and spent our first night camping. The ground was hard, though the sleeping pads helped more than I expected. We even got a little sprinkle of rain, but we all managed to sleep at least some.

The next morning, we were up bright and early to disassemble the tents and head to Etosha National Park, the area where most of the safaris in Namibia take place. We made another stop at a grocery store, with another delay (again, not unexpected if you’ve traveled in Africa) but some of the group, including the niña malcriada, were complete assholes to the guides about losing 30 minutes of their time on the trip. In my opinion, it was rude and completely unnecessary to be so ugly to the guides, but it was clear some of our tripmates felt differently. Yay.

Traveling from Windhoek to Etjo and Etosha, KT and I noticed there were a lot of road signs we don’t normally see in the US. I’m often delighted and amused by signs in other countries and take pictures of the ones I find of most interest. Having imparted that to KT, we spent much of the drive for the next eleven days taking pictures of road signs and road cuts whenever we weren’t shouting to each other about the awe-inspiring geology. Between these activities, I’m not sure whether the rest of the group was amused or annoyed, but we definitely had a great time.

Our time in Etosha turned out to be a fruitful two days, as we saw elephants, ostriches, zebras, giraffes, many different birds, and most interesting, a pack of hyena eating a scavenged kill while a sneaky jackal darted in and out trying to get its own share of breakfast. We also saw elephants being very friendly with each other, and lots of other animals hanging out at a lighted watering hole. As you might imagine, I took tons of pictures of the elephants, only to learn a few days later that there was something wrong with my camera. It hadn’t recorded a single picture of the elephants, and the light sensor was apparently going out as well, because all of the night pictures I took came out terribly. Luckily, Lisa managed to get a great picture of the elephants using her iPhone, but my camera going out was definitely a blow to the photographs on this trip.

One of the things KT and I were excited to see in the Etosha region was the large salt pan. KT figured out that there was karst underlying the pan, and springs were the source of the natural watering holes used by the animals. We saw the guides looking at some books, and upon closer inspection, it turned out they included small sections on the geology of different regions in the country. We were excited to have the information, but also disappointed with the tiny fragments on offer, forcing both of us to rely on distant memories from undergrad geology programs over 20 years ago to identify the geologic features.

In addition to pointing out the beautiful road cuts to each other, we spent hours every day hypothesizing about what we were actually seeing. Between the two of us, we seemed to figure most things out, but occasionally we were both stumped, or one of us couldn’t remember enough to confirm or deny what the other was saying. Once again, it kept us busy for hours every day while the rest of the group was probably wishing we would fall out of the truck.

Our suppositions and speculations were magnified at our last stop in Etosha, where we saw some type of varved rock, immediately identifiable by geologists because of the alternating dark and light banding characteristic of this type of sedimentary deposit. We spent much time on closer inspection, finally agreeing that the pattern was definitely varves from a lakebed deposit.  The outcrop was beautiful, as were the moringa trees, a species endemic to this part of Namibia. We weren’t happy to see that there were hundreds of names carved into every single one. KT and I are both of the “take pictures, leave footprints” school of nature, and the damage to the trees was a sour note on an otherwise lovely experience. Why is it exactly that so many humans can’t look at something beautiful without feeling like they have to mar it to prove they were there?

Leaving Etosha the next day, we stopped at an Otjikandero Himba Village. I’m uncomfortable with this type of tourist activity, because while I like to see and experience the cultures of other countries, brown people dancing for a bunch of white tourists smacks of racist colonialism. So while I did interact with the women and children of the tribe, I’m not sharing pictures or giving more of a description here.

After the village, we went through the Etendeka Mountains and the Grootberg Pass. This, my friends, is where the geology went from interesting to geogasm. As we drove through, KT and I realized we were looking at layer upon layer of flood basalts from the Gondwanaland rifting, clearly exposed in flat-top mountains with large U-shaped valleys shouting out the glaciation that occurred after the rift.

The guides had by now realized that KT and I were geogasming about rocks, and any time the volume and speed of the conversation increased to a certain point, they would pull over to let us take pictures of whatever we were passing, because they are awesome guides. Flood basalts from the breakup of Gondwanaland are truly geogasmic, and we definitely took lots of pictures (and maybe a couple of rocks).

The northern part of Namibia is hot during the day, even during their autumn, and at the camp we took the opportunity to jump into the (frigid) pool with a few drinks to enjoy the sunset. Palmwag is also one of many darker sky places in Namibia, and we were treated to a lovely full moon after dinner.

The next morning, we got up bright and early to look at the mostly dry riverbed of our campground, which exposed the top of a flood basalt. We quickly realized that the regional joint sets were clearly and easily visible, as were scours of all sizes, evoking more geogasms. KT and I spent a wonderful hour taking pictures of rocks, discussing the fracture patterns, checking out scours for aquatic life, looking at the seed stems that had fallen off the local palm trees for which the area is named, and possibly picked up a few more rocks. After all, no self-respecting geologist is going to pass up the chance to own a piece of a flood basalt from the Gondwanaland rift.

As we were leaving Palmwag, Broniel took us on a quick walk to show us a plant that could kill us. It’s probably a good thing, because it’s an interesting-looking plant, and left to my own devices, I would’ve been tempted to touch it, though probably not to eat it. Later in the morning, he pointed out another plant that’s highly toxic, proving that while Australia holds the crown for the most flora and fauna trying to kill humans, Namibia is no slouch.

At this point we climbed down from the mountains, heading for the Atlantic and the true reason I’ve always wanted to visit Namibia: the Skeleton Coast. Along the way, we stopped to see another plant endemic to Namibia: a dwarf tree known as Welwitschia mirabilis, some of which are thought to be over 1,500 years old. They are indeed interesting plants, and it was well worth the stop to check them out and see the beetles that live on them.

Then, it was on to Skeleton Coast National Park. The coast, part of the Namib Desert, stretches for 500 km from Swakopmund to the Angola border and is famous for its wind, dense fog, pounding surf, and the skeletons of whales and ships that are probably the origin of the name. The approach to the coast is through an active dune system composed of the eroded mountains of inland areas, carried by wind and water—another geogasm! Other than the dunes and sparse, low vegetation, the area is flat and sandy with only occasional metamorphic basement rocks breaking the surface. From a geologic standpoint there are many interesting things about the Coast, and for me, it’s been one of the places I’ve dreamed of visiting for years.

After driving through the dunes with only occasional glimpses of the water, the truck pulled over and Cheelo dumped us onto the beach to walk through a portion of this famous area. Finally, finally, I was here—and it was incredible. It’s very cold and windy, the surf is indeed pounding, and it’s gorgeous.

Metamorphic exposures crop up at the edge of the waves and provide a home for many types of aquatic life. Kelp bobs in the giant waves just offshore, and areas of the beach are covered in pink sand derived from rocks containing garnets. To stand in this place, taking in the splendor and feeling nature exerting her will, is an indescribable feeling. For me, it’s one that can only come from this type of experience. KT and I walked along the beach, inspecting rocks and critters, and reveled in the beauty of this barren stretch of earth while experiencing geogasms over the beach’s lovely garnet sand.

After almost an hour of joyful exploration, we reached the Benguela Eagle, one of the shipwrecks for which the Coast is rightfully famous. After some inspection and pictures, we grudgingly climbed the dune to rejoin the group for lunch overlooking the coast before getting back in the truck to visit our next destination: what may be one of the smelliest attractions in Namibia, the Cape Cross seal colony.

The Cape Cross Seal Reserve is home to over 100,000 Cape fur seals. While not as smelly as I was expecting, it was definitely odiferous and also LOUD. Seals make a lot of noise, and so many seals were loud enough that we had to raise our voices to talk over them. The seals are territorial, meaning lots of squabbles and fighting when there are so many close together. They also occasionally object to humans, and Cheelo had to encourage one to stop menacing us as we walked to the gated boardwalk overlooking the area.

After a night in the campground, we headed to the 2008 shipwreck of the Zeila. The recent nature of this site meant the boat was much more intact than the Benguela Eagle, and we spent some time watching waves crashing into the wreck. Then it was back into the truck to visit another endemic Namibian ‘plant:’ a gigantic field of lichen that survives on the water provided by the fog sweeping in from the ocean.

From the lichen field, we journeyed through more desert dunes to our next destination, the town of Swakopmund. A small town that’s described as a beach resort by people who don’t understand what’s supposed to happen at the beach, it provided a nice break from time spent in the cold of the Skeleton Coast. It was also a reprieve from sleeping in tents, since we had one night in a hotel. We made the most of the afternoon, dropping all of our clothes at the laundry and walking around the city to change money and buy gifts. It’s obviously a colonial German city, and also obviously a tourist area, including a large craft market of Himba and locals hawking their wares. We enjoyed a pleasant afternoon complete with delicious, deep-fried brie and a springbok pie, then went to our hotel to relax and enjoy having four walls around us.

Dinner that night was at the Tug, a restaurant on the beach built around an old tug boat. This was also a farewell dinner for two of our companions who’d opted to take only a one-week tour, and thank goodness the niña malcriada was one of them. She’d remained pouty, childish, and unhelpful throughout the week, and we were all three relieved to be shot of her—her rudeness and bad attitude hanging over the group like a thundercloud, and her ass cheeks hanging out of her shorts every time she stood up. Pro tip: have some effing respect for the culture of the country you’re in, especially if that country has a dress code on the conservative side. And have some respect for the people around you who will be forced to avoid looking at your ass cheeks because you couldn’t buy shorts long enough to cover them.

And that, dear readers, was the end of our first week in Namibia and our stopping point for this episode. The next part of the geogasm tour is even more exciting, and here’s a sneak peek: