Woke up early this morning and went for a walk outside of the lodge (one of the guides said that it would be ok and that we wouldn’t get eaten. The sun was just reaching the tops of the mountain behind the lodge and turning them from orange to gold. We checked out the rock engravings at the entrance way that passes through huge rocks to suddenly reveal the thatched lodge buildings huddled at the base of the rock strewn mountain. Some of these engravings were modern but there were also some ancient ones there.
Breakfast upstairs in the dining room with a great view out over the countryside. We then loaded up the van and headed for the Twyfelfontein World Heritage Listed Rock Engravings site. There were lots of engravings concentrated in a small area all accessible with a little rock hopping.
Twyfelfontein (Afrikaans: uncertain spring), officially known as Damara/Nama: jumping waterhole), is a site of ancient rock engravings in the Kunene Region of north-western Namibia. It consists of a spring in a valley flanked by the slopes of a sandstone table mountain that receives very little rainfall and has a wide range of diurnal temperatures.
The site has been inhabited for 6,000 years, first by hunter-gatherers and later by Khoikhoi herders. Both ethnic groups used it as a place of worship and a site to conduct shamanist rituals. In the process of these rituals at least 2,500 items of rock carvings have been created, as well as a few rock paintings. Displaying one of the largest concentrations of rock petroglyphs in Africa, UNESCO approved Twyfelfontein as Namibia's first World Heritage Site in 2007.
The site has been inhabited for 6,000 years, first by hunter-gatherers and later by Khoikhoi herders. Both ethnic groups used it as a place of worship and a site to conduct shamanist rituals. In the process of these rituals at least 2,500 items of rock carvings have been created, as well as a few rock paintings. Displaying one of the largest concentrations of rock petroglyphs in Africa, UNESCO approved Twyfelfontein as Namibia's first World Heritage Site in 2007.
From here it was off to Burnt Mountain. The mountain’s fantastic range of colours at dawn and dusk are due to a chemical reaction that took place roughly 125 million years ago when molten lava penetrated organic shale and limestone deposits, resulting in contact metamorphism. In ordinary sunlight it is a dull black contrasting to the browns of the surrounding hills. The mountain was proclaimed a national monument in 1956.
After leaving Twyfelfontein we headed west towards the Namibian Coast. The desert plains here have very little vegetation. Just amazing how desolate it is.
We eventually arrived at Henty Bay for a 4pm lunch of fish, chips and salad at a pub on the beach. After the heat of the last few weeks it has now turned quite cool and a search for jackets was required.
South from Henty Bay it was another 70km along the coast to our accommodation for the next two nights at the Beach Hotel in Swakopmund. Our room has a balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. For dinner we walked to a restaurant at the jetty a couple of hundred metres along the beachfront – A nice fish restaurant even if we did have to wait ‘forever’ to be served.
