The start of 2008 has been particularly grey and dull – not the sort of weather for photography. So here are a couple of sets of contributed pictures (from EH) taken in Namibia in September. The first loosely groups “geography” – physical, built and human.
Spitzkoppe [21 49 29 S, 15 11 39 E] in the early morning
Rock bridge in the Spitzkoppe area in the evening sun
Sand dunes around Sossusvlei [24 44 S, 15 22 E] a large pan (valley floor) surrounded by sand dunes. The largest dunes may move perhaps no more than 1 m each year, but the most mobile (known as barchans) in the Luderitz area can move up to 50 m per year.
Sunrise near Sossusvlei
Dead Vlei [24 45 47 S, 15 17 38 E] – another pan a few kilometres west of Sossusvlei
Coastal sand dunes just outside Swakopmund.
Rock engravings at Twyfelfontein. Engravings in the area range in age from around 300 BC to as recent as the 19th century. Note the ostrich with four neck and heads! The area was named Uri-Aris (“jumping fountain”) by the Damara people, but was renamed Twyfelfontein (“doubtful fountain”) in 1947 by the first white farmer to acquire the land as he considered the fountain too weak to support much life.
The Himba people still live a more or less traditional existence in the Kaokoland area of north-west Namibia.
In little more than 25 years, the German Imperial Government built a number of extravagant buildings which represent one of the best preserved collections of German colonial architecture.
In 1910 the German Government decided to build an enormous, and hugely expensive, 640 m iron jetty. When work stopped at the outbreak of the First World War only a third of the jetty had been completed. Although later finished, it is now abandoned.