Saturday, November 7, 2009

Twyfelfontein

Twyfelfontein is a magical area of huge boulders interspersed by impressive rock engraving galleries and the main area with engravings is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. At the nicely laid out visitors center that perfectly blends into the surroundings we were met by a guide (guides are compulsory). He was a very intelligent and well informed young man and we had a nice talk while walking around looking at the engravings. The engravings are believed to be up to 6000 years old and have been done by the San, a nomadic hunter-gather people that have lived in Namibia always it seems. All the engravings are of animals, except for a few human footprints. There were elephants, giraffes, wildebeest, lions etc. but quite surprisingly there were also depicted flamingos and seals - which live by the coast. Our guide told us that it is believed the San travelled to the coast to collect salt, a journey that would take 6 months! We were there at midday and the hot African sun was beating down on us relentlessly - it was damn hot!





We are camping at a community run place called Granietkop Campsite, it is the cheapest place we have camped so far at 40 Namibian dollars per person, and the setting here is stunning! The camp ground is laid out around a hill made out of big orange boulders and the individual sites are placed around this hill. Each site has its own “kitchen area” with a sink as well as a shower and toilet that are incorporated into the boulders and the cliff side – our toilet came with a great view too. It’s part of the NACOBTA organization, which have many community run campsites around Namibia – quite a lot of them sounds very appealing! (http://www.nacobta.com.na/)





Our site is really secluded and it feels like we are the only people in all of Namibia, while we are sitting here looking out over the beautiful landscape that stretches out beneath us. We ate a lovely meal that we cooked on our camping stove as the sun set casting an orange light over the boulders making them look like they were almost on fire. Later as the shiny full moon rose we retired into our tent for a peaceful night’s sleep, next morning however we woke up to the sounds of two little rat dassies who had found a packet of biscuits that we had left out the night before…


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