Africa Photographic Safaris Namibia

Namibia is one of Africa’s mysterious destinations…..

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From the scorched moonscape of the Fish River Canyon in the south, to the lush waterways of the Kunene, Kavango and Zambezi rivers in the north, Namibia is an extraordinarily beautiful and varied land. With the oldest desert on earth and the treacherous Skeleton Coast, Namibia still manages to sustain an incredible variety of living things, in terrain that is as striking as it is desolated.

In the south, the ashen landscape tilts gently upward from the scarred canyon of the Orange River to reveal vast gravel plains stretching to the horizon. To the west, the Namib Desert forms a barrier between the interior and the shore of the icy Atlantic. Further inland, petrified forests (dating back 250 million years) stand next to fossil riverbeds snaking across the dry land. Prehistoric-looking trees with gnarled branches rise up out of a boulderland of black rock, and ancient welwitschia plants – seemingly half dead – lie baking in the sun.

But suddenly the landscape changes: in Sossusvlei at the southern end of the Namib-Naukluft Park, the highest dunes in the world, rise up to meet the sky, their sands reflecting the ever-changing light; in the east, the gravel plains give way to yellow and gold grasslands, merging with the gentle hills of the Kalahari, the longest continuous stretch of sand in the world.

In the north, the peaks of the Brandberg Mountains and other rocky islands, such as the Spitzkoppe, signpost one of the world’s richest collections of rock art. Here also are the desert elephants and black rhinos of Damarland, which, like the creatures of the Namib and Kalahari deserts, and other animals of the fossil riverbeds, have made special adaptations to survive the scorching desert conditions.

In the north, Namibia’s wildlife showpiece, Etosha National Park, is home to 114 mammal species, including lion, elephant, giraffe and tens of thousands of antelope. But it is the 340 species of birds, attracted by the ephemeral waters of Etosha Pan, which bring color and vibrance to this great African game reserve, stretching 350 kilometers from east to west. And further east, beyond the Hartmann Mountains of the Kunene Region, a landscape of coneshaped hills gives way to the palm trees and verdant waterways of the Kunene River. All this is the mystery and fascination of a spectacular land that belongs to the 21st century, but which still lies buried in the ancient sands of the past.

Source: www.kowasadventure.com