I grew up in Riviersonderned, a small town near Caledon in the Overberg. We used to call it the "Platteland" in Afrikaans. Directly translated it means "Flat Country" in English. I could never really understand this notion of it being flat because we were surrounded by hills and even had a very high mountain within 10 km from our home.
Here in Namibia the idea of the Platteland makes more sense to me; in some areas this place is FLAT. I must admit that here are more mountains than I expected but my lasting impression of the rural areas are that it is flat.
Sometimes when we come over a rise in the road we are absolutely speechless with the panorama that unfolds in front of us. The problem with trying to catch it on camera is that, with large parts of the country being fairly flat, is that the picture one is trying to take is also so big that it is virtually impossible to capture a scene in one photograph. Sometimes the scene that one would like to capture has already passed by the time we realise that it was worth taking.
The following are a couple of the scenes that we did manage to capture and would like to share with you.
On our way into Damaraland, close to a place called Bergsig, we saw what from afar looked like ground cover planted in a garden. It is actually fairly large rocks with shrubs in between.
The next photo is one of those where the camera is not capable of capturing the scene we saw. These mountains in Damaraland look so much more spectacular when you see in t in person, but here is a little glimpse of it. To see the real thing you will have to come look for yourselves.
We visited a farm called Rustig Toko, named after the Red Hornbill bird, and were taken to spot from where we saw this lush scene, looking towards the lodge. The farm is about 15 km south of the Etosha Pans and the recent rains also provided welcome relief in this area.
The mountains in the Sussosvlei area are also very spectacular but difficult to effectively capture on camera. The next couple of photos are all from this area.
The following picture reflect a little bit of the beauty that we saw. What I especially liked was the black band in the middle. We later saw that it shows up on top of the mountains to the right in the picture.
At Sossusvlei Desert Lodge Regina took this photo. Note the ancient dunes of the Namib on the right and the mountains on the left.
Sometimes we do manage to capture the essence of the scene as in the following photo. It gives a feeling of the stretched out country side and the never ending mountains that we saw.
On our way to Zebra River Lodge we drove through this unusual canyon. It was about 25 km off our the main roads but well worth the effort.
One of the trips took us down to Ai-Ais in the far south of Namibia. We went there just when the cold front hit Cape Town on Monday 14 June. As we approached Ai-Ais we could see the clouds building up and cast their shadows on the landscape.
Just as we got close to Ai-Ais it started to rain. I always enjoy driving in the rain but winter rain in Southern Namibia is very special. Fortunately we did not have to sleep in the rooftop tent that night because it came down in bucketfuls.
This last one made me chuckle. I work for a company that focus mainly on wireless communication systems suck as WiMAX, Wifi and VSAT. The following photo shows why wireless communication is very popular in Namibia. The nests on top of each telephone pole are built by communal weavers (afr.: versamel voeëls)
Next time I will put up some interesting photos we took that does not involve landscapes.
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