Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
The Namib’s “sand sea” has to be seen to be believed…and when you do see “our” planet’s most exquisite dunes, you may still wonder if you are dreaming, or hallucinating.
Namibia also has the most beautiful rock faces I have ever seen; as is also true of Central Australia’s rocky ranges and outcrops, their beauty is in part thanks to the highly specialised vegetation with which they are sparely “punctuated”, rather than fully “clothed”.
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Atlantic fog-factor permitting, early morning affords your eyes and camera their best chance to experience/capture crisp, sharp views of some of the world’s most astonishing vistas.
(Namibia’s western side is one of “our” planet’s least rainy regions, but also one of the foggiest)
Once the sun is “high” and the heat is “on”, the light becomes flatter, yet harsher, and heat haze destroys fine detail.
However, late morning has its own special charm…
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As even the most cursory googler will discover almost instantly, “facts” and opinions concerning Namibia’s seal population and human “management” thereof are widely/wildly divergent/contested.
Suffice for now that all of Namibia’s seals are Cape Fur Seals, and that an enormous number (and major proportion of the global population) of them live and die on Namibia’s coast.
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Péringuey’s Adder is one of many names for Bitis peringueyi; the most descriptive are “Namib desert sidewinding adder” and “dwarf sand adder”.
This one was variously speeding/attacking/burrowing-hiding on or near the surface of one of the Namib’s westernmost dunes, just in from the Atlantic Ocean…and almost literally next door to Swakopmund’s easternmost houses.
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This mother and calf are black rhinos – the smaller of Africa’s two rhino species
They still “enjoy” a critically endangered conservation status, but numbers have rebounded in recent years.
Circa one third of them live in Namibia.
Photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken at 9.30 pm on 05 November 2022 in Etosha National Park.
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On Thursday – the second day of our current “expedition” to Namibia – my beloved and I had our lifetimes’ most exciting (to date) close-range encounter with a wild carnivore.
The featured image’s leopard is coming back down from the tree in which she had just stashed “the kill” she had made that afternoon.
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Imagine the image above, devoid of context, and subjected to a “caption this photo” contest.
A suitably cornball “winner”:
a quiet drink with a few mates.
The featured image was taken with a long lens (560 mm) at 11.12 am on 20 February 2020.
The photo immediately below was taken just a few seconds later, from almost exactly the same vantage point, overlooking a pond/reservoir, a few minutes away from Khichan…
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Cranes: in this case, Demoiselle cranes, the world’s smallest crane species,
Jains: adherents of Jainism, an Indian religion which is older than Christianity and Islam.
The practical application of Jainism’s central principle/vow has produced an astounding result.
For Demoiselle cranes (and for human admirers of one of the world’s more elegant birds) Khichan – a modest village in the Thar Desert – is now the world’s most rewarding destination.
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…are all integral to this post, which is a sequel to both the immediately-preceding one and to the 28 January 2022 post on “Hope”.
If you do not already know Emily Dickinson’s poem Hope is The Thing With Feathers you should click here before you read/see/listen to the rest of this post.
Comments closedWhilst I hope you enjoy the photo, it is really here to alert you to a beautiful, quietly surprising “live” performance of Andrea Keller’s Broken Reflection.
The photo was taken in a forest glade in the USA’s Pacific Northwest; the music is Australian.
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