The secrets of Damaraland

Damaraland has a certain feel to it – after the plain roads and the desert scenery you suddenly end up in the middle of red-coloured mountains. Damaraland has a lot to offer, and after the beautiful night at Spitzkoppe, we headed to Brandberg, The Fire Mountain. It was really nice for a change not to have a long drive ahead of us, so we actually got to enjoy our time at the pool of Brandberg White Lady Lodge, were we camped with the desert elephants. Well, we ended up not seeing any, but a French-Irish couple we met on our first night in Namibia had seen a herd of 20 elephants in the camp site (we did experience a herd of cows walking past during the night though, and even that was quite exciting when you are watching them from the ground level). We also had many other animal friends at our campsite at Brandberg, as you can see.

The one thing we sort of ended up missing out on was the Fire Mountain during sunset. Due to the hing levels of iron in the mountain, its Western wall turns all red when the sun is setting. However, this phenomenon took place on the other side, so we couldn’t see it from the lodge. We were told that the same effect can be witnessed from our lodge in the morning at sunrise. So we woke up 5.30 and climbed on a nearby hill to catch the sunrise, which was beautiful (we even held a small circuit training session while waiting for the sun to come up, well-earned activity points).

There is a collection of interesting nature sights near Brandberg, so we had quite a lot of sightseeing ahead of us for the day. We left the lodge very early, because we wanted to enjoy the sights before the hottest hours. But it turned out we didn’t get there as early as we would’ve hoped, since Google maps led us to an interesting non-existent road, and for a while we drove in the rived bed. We did get out okay in the end, but this “shortcut” took an extra hour, but it was a nice little adventure ;)

You have to use your imagination to hear the music of Organ Pipes.

Twyfelfontein (the Uncertain Spring) is the first UNESCO World Heritage site in Namibia, a place to see the ancient rock engravings, which were made up to 2000–2500 years ago. In this picture is the Lion Plate with a Lion Man, a creature with human toes and an extremely long tail!

A massive flood brought the trees to the Petrified Forest 280 millions years ago. The flood also contained a lot of mud and sand, which covered the trees in a way that air intrusion was prevented and no decay took place, so they turned into stone due to the enormous pressure. Thanks to erosion, even 45 meter long trees have now been discovered, quite amazing!

For the night we had booked a camp site from the Hoada camp (managed by the luxurious Grootberg Lodge), but when we got there in the afternoon quite hungry, our booking was nowhere to be found. But thanks to the friendly and customer service orientated staff at the camp, a spot was finally arranged with a small discount. For the evening we got to enjoy a delicious camping dinner (we had to keep walking constantly while eating though since there were so many flies around us), and before going to bed a youth choir from a nearby village came to sing us a few traditional songs, which was a very nice way to end the day.

First giraffes spotted, yea!

Sunset at the Hoada campsite

Sleeping under the stars at Spitzkoppe

Spitzkopppe, the well-known 1728 m high mountain of Damaraland is beautiful to look at, but also functions as one of the hotspots for the Namibian climbing community. Tours are organised even for beginners, since climbing the mountain apparently is 95 % hiking. Even so, you need to be totally self-sufficient and geared up when starting the climb, so e.g. for these reasons we decided to leave the climb to another time and just admired the beauty of the mountain during sunset, when leaving Swakopmund behind and continuing our journey towards the Northern parts of Namibia.

We had chosen a community-run Spitzkoppe Rest Camp as our destination for the night, and it turned out to be exactly the right choice. The moon that night was huge and shed its light from a clear sky down to the isolated camp site. We decided to sleep without a tent, under the stars (even though there had been cold nights in Namibia, this was almost too hot of an evening, so we concluded it would be okay). As one of us did worry about insects and other nightly animals a bit, there was some reassuring to do before we were peacefully asleep.

At nighttime the wind was blowing gently, and besides feeling the cool breeze on his face, Timo was also able to hear the wind as a constant hum in his ear. This was even when it wasn’t blowing anymore, so we figured something was wrong. Turned out there was a small ant inside the ear and Timo could hear it stepping around! To our relief at 4 am a small drop of hand antiseptic fluid on a cotton bud did its magic and the small ant crawled his way out. For the rest of the night we naturally covered our ears with our woollen hats - didn't wanna take the risk of a bigger insect finding its way in. 

Like mentioned before, the campsite we stayed in is run by the nearby community. This means that every person in the village gets their share from the travellers spending. People who work as guides or in the campsite restaurant get a bigger share, but they still ensure that everybody in a community will benefit from the business, which is a huge deal for the village.

One of the sources of income to the community are guided Bushman painting tours in the area. We took part in a tour in the morning, and had a superb local guide showing us the ancient Bushman paintings - when we heard the stories it was hard to believe how essential and informative these beautiful paintings have been. The paintings were made 2000-4000 years BC, and they were used for communication purposes and knowledge sharing.



As nomads the Bushman people lived in small groups, and they had to move long distances in order to find food and water to live on. Tribes had to share information about their movements to other tribes in the area in order to e.g. ensure there were not too many people sharing the valuable resources at the same place at the same time. But they didn't leave having water to a change - they used ostrich eggs to storage it! They made an extremely small hole to the egg, filled the egg with water and then buried it deep into the ground so it could be used during the dry season. Beats me how they were able to find it later on! Also, the direction into which the paintings pointed into worked as a map: in the head-side one would find water and animals, so it was also like an ancient compass system. Fascinating!