Namibia. Part V: Keetmanshoop, Grunau & Fish River Canyon
Thanks to my husband for contributing some photos
The final stretch of our journey consisted of a packed schedule of short stopovers as we made our way back to the South African border. After dusting Sossusvlei's red crust off, we braved the 6,5-hour off-road drive to Keetmanshoop.
My friend, Pieter, found a delightful camp for us to overnight, a place called Mesosaurus Fossil Camp. He had us with “fossil” and soon the daydreaming started with discovering T-Rex’s skull or some other bone while on a stroll. On the other hand, the word “fossil” was also so intoxicating that we didn’t really bother to read up about the place and upon our arrival we found, to our dismay, that this really is a rough-it-out-in-the-desert camp. We had a lovely bungalow but no electricity. Our bathroom was in the main room, but with a straw door and no ceiling to keep any shower steam or shall we say any other activities concealed within the bathroom. This made our accommodation the perfect setting for team building and reconnecting with each other on an intimate basis. The rest of the bungalow, however, was charming and beautifully decorated in what I like to call "rustic chic", even the bedside tables were carved from quiver trees, which are found on the farm.
After a temporary manic episode from realizing what a night without electricity actually meant, we settled in and soon realized that communing with nature and having the campfire, as our only light source (our cell phone batteries have died by that point), was actually quite hyggelig. We ended up huddling around the fire, roasting marshmallows, and telling ghost stories under the starry sky. There were no city lights or traffic to spoil the mood, we had only the crackling of the fire and the odd animal noise far off in the distance to lull us as the sweet-tempered evening drew on.
Looking back at that snug evening by the fire, telling ghost stories was probably not the best idea. As I mentioned, there are no traces of life around because you are in the middle of nowhere (this seems to be a recurring theme in Namibia) with no signs of civilization nearby except for the animals that live there. Seeing a gazelle or wildebeest in the wild is a spectacular experience - emphasis on “seeing”. That evening, however, we only heard animal noises and they were not in the far distance like earlier when we roasted marshmallows. Nope, they were, according to my estimation, right by the window next to my bed. My friend, Gerda and I slept about 20 minutes that entire night. Not because we were scared of the animals, we actually have a really deep love for safari animals, we were kept awake because we heard noises a bit too close to us and we couldn’t distinguish what kind of animal it was. The unknown and somewhat supernatural noises of what might be a wild animal in the middle of the bush far away from help, especially when you have no light to switch on to quickly see what’s sending your blood pressure through the roof, is unnerving, to put it mildly. Now, I need to mention that Gerda is quite the expert on safari species and she is chock-a-block full of fun facts about them, including what noises they make. She was stumped. We couldn’t figure out what was aggressively thrashing about right outside our bungalow. Sleep deprived and scared out of our wits we came to the conclusion that the objective of this “animal” was simply to torture us. It would maul something outside our window for a short while, then there would be long pauses and just when both our nerves would start to settle, the fiend would be back to kick-start our terror again. It was sporadic, unpredictable, and pure evil. At some point, we even heard screams – human screams. That was the point when our imaginations officially peaked. My body had never felt so heavy from panic before, all the while the rest of our group were softly slumbering completely unaware of to the malevolent force outside that was probably shredding those poor people by now.
The next morning, eyes bloodshot and no electricity to make coffee, we found out that there was a hunting party running loose close to our camp the night before and the guys got a bit too excited when they shot a deer. That accounts for the screams we heard but what exactly was toying with our sanity throughout the night remains a mystery until today.
Nothing adds more charm to camping in the wild than a bit of mild terror. Even though I was sure we were reliving a Stephen King novel that evening, looking back at it now makes me really miss that experience in the free wild with only stars, wild animals, and your imagination to entertain you.
Dinosaurs!
Once morning arrived and our sanity somewhat returned, we were setting out to do the main reason we chose the camp: hunting fossils. This farm belongs to a delightfully entertaining farmer named, Giel Steenkamp. His dust-covered farm, astonishingly, used to be a lake and home to the Mesosaurus.
Now, when you read “Mesosaurus” you’re pretty confident I’m talking about a dinosaur, and the fact that I mentioned “fossils” earlier assures you of that even more. And you would be right; it was a dinosaur (a lizard in fact) from the Early Permian. The Permian is a geologic period that happened about 250-300 Million years ago.
Like most, this era had both an up and a downside. The upside was, it was known for birthing "mammal-like reptiles” for the first time since, ever. However, the downside was that it witnessed the most severe mass extinction in the history of the planet, even worse than the one that ultimately wiped out the dinosaurs so many millions years later. It was so bad that up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species died out. The causes could be many – we are talking about millions of year ago – from trigger-happy volcanoes, the dinosaur-friendly asteroid, to sea levels falling. Lots of scientists also believe there must have been a climate crisis, methane eruptions, and anoxic events–when the earth's oceans lose their oxygen.
Now let’s get to the one word I’ve been dying to mention: Pangaea. This was a supercontinent during the Permian. Scientists also believe that this beautiful word for a continent also played a part in the mass-extinction of marine species by severely reducing shallow coastal areas, which many marine organisms liked to call home. In contrast to how things look and are distributed today, Pangaea was a large chunk of land surrounded by a superocean, Panthalassa. Pangaea was the most recent supercontinent and she was also the first that geologists were able to reconstruct.
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| source: Mentalfloss |
As you can see she’s a big c-shaped beauty. She was believed to have split and separated during the Jurassic period about 180 million years ago, first into two supercontinents: Gondwana to the south and Laurasia to the north, and thereafter into the 7 continents we know today.
Namibia, especially that area in Keetmanshoop, then belonging to Pangaea, and later Gondwanaland, was once under water or were swamps riddled with reptiles and fish etc. It was clearly also home to the Mesosaurus. Our guide was a well of information and told us that these marine animals lived in the shallow waters during the early Permian ages. And once the continents shifted and the shores changed, the water receded causing these animals to die and their bones being fossilized and preserved in the mud. Looking at Keetmanshoop now, you’d never image a drop of natural water anywhere, which is why Giel picking up a fossil of a marine reptile from a red dust bed was incredibly exciting. Him showing us these fossils were also an overwhelming fact to prove the drifting continent theory and also that Gondwanaland existed because today you can find the same genus in the same rock formations of the Mesosaurus in South America.
With the ancient fossil in his one hand, he pointed to the reptile’s features and explained that Mesosaurus were amphibian reptiles and apex predators. He pointed to another fossil and showed us its teeth, explaining that they were too soft to attack larger prey, and was mainly used as to filter their food, like a Baleen whale does with plankton.
As he carefully placed the fossil back under a sheet of corrugated iron and places a rock on top, he explained that all the discovered fossils on his farm are hidden underneath a metal sheet to preserve them from wind, rain, and other animals that live on his farm. It’s also a great locator for him when doing the tours. He was a real joker and shared anecdotes in 3 languages for hours. He told us as a child, his son, found a fossil while playing. Giel then though it was a salamander fossil, however, after consulting with an expert of the University of Pretoria, Dr. Oelofse, they were identified as the fossils of the Mesosaurus, and on top, they seem to be the oldest reptilian fossils in southern Africa.
Once we were done fawning over the fossils, Giel took us to the second amazing part of his farm - his quiver tree forest. The trees get their name from the Bushmen who made quivers for their arrows from the tree’s tubular branches. When closing one end of the branch with pelt, it created a perfectly hollowed quiver. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a quiver tree up close. They have an ominous air to them that almost demands respect for their age and awe for their unique beauty. How many trees have you seen with a golden trunk and where it seems to be upside down because the leaves resemble roots?
Among the beautiful ancient trees were large black boulders. Giel picked up a rock and started hammering a jingle on a few rocks, asking us to name the tune. Large boulders like these give a bell-like sound when struck. These were created by magma that bubbled up from below the surface of the earth, before cooling off. They get their dark color from magnesium oxide and their lighter color from iron oxide. Who knew that such a dry, dusty, and god-forsaken farm could conceal so many riches!
Gems!
En route to the border and near the end of our trip, we wanted to overnight in a small town called Grunau. Naturally, we wanted a local place outside of town and found one of the highlights of the entire trip: Withuis (white house) drowning in rose quartz.
Soon after finding this gorgeous house online, I knew we had a hit on our hands. We would live in the original manor on the farm and we would be taken on a tour of their personal rose quartz farm. Now, I can’t speak for what floats people’s boats, but that sounded like a spectacular deal for me.
The White House was built between 1912-1915 and since 1927 the stunning house has been in the same family ever since. Their website has a colorful account of the house’s history and is definitely worth a read.
While walking through the house, it was like time stood still. The hardwood floors, the decoration, and furniture beautifully presented a preserved home from the early 20th century. Rose quartz decorated the garden and were also scattered around the farm among the normal rocks.
During the tour of their quartz quarry, the guide, Dolf Jr, took us on 2 -hour drive through their land and explained how they found the pink gems in their backyard and also how the clarity grading works. During the tour, we were also allowed to pick 2-3 stones to take home as a souvenir of Namibia and Withuis. Much better than any postcard!
What a View!
A short drive from Withuis is the absolute-must-see attraction: Fish River Canyon. The biggest canyon in Africa, this giant stretches 160 km (100 miles ), up to 27 km (16.777 miles) wide and ascends almost 550 meters (1804.462 feet) deep, making it the second largest canyon in the world. It's quite the landscape spectacular. It's simply to large to register what you're looking at. You're standing there, on a platform, feeilng small and insignificant, hovering over a giant. Everywhere you look there are a series of dazzling enormous cliffs, that are towering high over the river that snakes between massive boulders. Noticed how many synonyms I used for the word "big"? There's just no other way to describe this other than it's huge. The colors start to blend together and pretty soon all you see is brown because there's nothing else to see. It's takes up all the visual space - it's that big. Once your brain realizes you're looking at something never-ending you can start to focus on just how beautiful it is: the imacaulate detail of the riffs bewteen the hills, the emerald shine of the river and the bewtiching shape of the boulders. Let's just say, you'll be standing there gawking for a while.
The viewpoint close to the Ai-Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park is the only public section of the canyon, the other 90 km of this canyon is privately owned. You can, however, hike the entire canyon and this will take roughly about 5 days.
Namibia was quite the exceptional adventure. It's a dusty and endearing country brimming with treasures from the exceptional landscape, wildlife, history, and most importantly the kind and openhearted people. It is definitely worth a visit and your time. It's the type of place that speaks to your soul, and where you can commune with nature's elite, observe magnificent creatures, hunt for ancient relics, and be reminded of how small we are in comparison to the enormity of Mother Nature with Namibia being just one of her ambassadors.
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