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Silicon – usually, as quartz crystals – is the primary component of most of the world’s light-coloured ocean beaches.
However, in tropical and subtropical waters where coral reefs thrive, calcium carbonate is more likely to be a so-called “white” sand beach’s “hero” ingredient.
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East Java’s Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park (aka, within Indonesia, as “TNBTS”) contains multiple volcanoes.
Mount Semeru (3,676 metres) is Java’s highest peak, atop which snow sometimes sits, albeit briefly.
However, the park’s “tourist magnet” is a volcano that is much less lofty, but currently much more active
Mount Bromo (2, 329 metres) is surrounded by Indonesia’s only desert-like expanse.
Bromo is one of the four or five “new” volcanoes (visibility was limited when we were there. some sources say “four”, others say “five”) that have arisen from the floor of the huge caldera created by the much older Tengger volcano.
The Tengger Sand Sea’s “sands” are a mix of volcanic ash and sand – the mostly-basaltic “fruit” of Bromo’s eruptions.
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Hoteliers and tour operators like to describe the pictured beach as “idyllic”.
Ifaty is a village in southwestern Madagascar; fishing is its raison d’être., although tourism has become increasingly significant in recent years.
Its seafront “lagoon” is sheltered by one of the world’s major coral reefs.
On the reef’s far side is the Mozambique Channel, which is 1,700 ks long, 419 ks wide at its narrowest point, and surprisingly deep – up to nearly 3,300 metres, with an average depth of around 2,700 metres.
I took the photo just before midday on 19 May 2018, as the big daily event was unfolding.
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Both photos were taken about twenty minutes after we had flown over the wreck of the Eduard Bohlen.
Less than half an hour later we would be back in Swakopmund, after our late afternoon 600 k flight over the Namib Desert’s “sand sea”.
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#41 in this series showed a sand dune “eating” forest in Australia’s southwestern “corner”, a few kilometres from the Indian Ocean,.
This chapter sees a shipwreck being devoured by the Namib Desert, adjacent to the Atlantic coast of Southern Africa.
Above and below, you are looking at what remains of the Eduard Bohlen.
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Oryx gazella – the gemsbok, aka “African oryx”/ “South African oryx” – is the largest oryx species.
Namibia’s emblematic mammal is prodigiously well-adapted to a very demanding environment.
Gemsbok would probably handsomely defeat the “ship of the desert” in any global championship for “most efficient/ hardiest mammal in sandy places where rain hardly ever falls, and where no “permanent” rivers flow”.
The Namib Desert’s “sand sea” – most especially, around Sossusvlei – has some of “our” planet’s most astonishing landscapes.
More than a few of its dunes dwarf even the largest local inhabitants!
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The multi-hued appearance of these dunes – just a few kilometres inland from the Atlantic Ocean – shows that their composition is diverse, not overwhelmingly silica-dominant.
Silica does not rust; iron does.
Rust is clearly evident in some of the pictured sands, albeit less spectacularly so than in much of Australia’s “Red Centre”…and in the Namib too, further inland.
Most of the sands in the Namib Desert’s dunes are not of “local” origin.
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The Namib’s plants are as astonishing as its animals.
We were just a few kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean, near Swakopmund, when I took this post’s photos, one November mid-afternoon.
Swakopmund’s “round figure” rainfall average for the month of November: 1 mm.
November is “infinitely” wetter than October!
Average October rainfall in Swakopmund: 0 mm.
Average total for the calendar year’s entire final quarter: 2 mm.
Q: how on earth can a very shallow-rooted, Namib-endemic shrub – one that often grows on the upper part of a dune – manage to survive? (and be a useful “emergency water source” for desert animals – parched humans included)
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Meroles anchietae – the shovel-snouted lizard – is endemic to the Namib Desert’s dunes.
Its signature behaviours – “dancing” atop the sand’s surface on a hot day, and diving into the cooler sand, below – are adaptations developed in order to survive an imminent, lethal threat.
As illustrated in #27 of this series, we were lucky enough to witness its astonishingly speedy sand-diving – a feat in which the key factor is its “shovel”.
Just inland from Swakopmund, and only a few kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean, the afternoon of 19 November 2022 was cool.
Accordingly, whilst our hero did deploy his “shovel” snout in order to escape predators/us, he did not need to dance!
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Palmatogecko rangei (aka Pachydactylus rangei) is petite – less than 7cm long.
Endemic to the Namib desert, this dune-dwelling hunter of small invertebrates is commonly known as the “Namib sand gecko”, or the (Namib) “web-footed gecko”
Its skin is almost translucent, but exquisitely coloured.
Relative to its body, its feet are very big; its eyes are HUGE.
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