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Tag: Namib Desert

Namib Desert’s northwest (#11 in series: “castles”)

 

 

The Hoarusib is one of several ephemeral Namibian desert rivers that have generated  so-called “sand castles”, or “clay castles”.

These extraordinary landforms’ origins and age are shrouded in mystery, speculation, and competing theories.

I am quite unable to offer a definitive explanation, other than to quote some good sense from Roger Swart:

…there is abundant evidence that the silts were deposited by high-energy flows, separated by times of calm……The most likely explanation for the deposits is therefore flash floods during a wet period, which would have brought down a heavy sediment load that was dumped when the energy of the river waned.

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#10 in series: bones, near “castles”)

 

This post’s photos are not looking at the nearby “castles”, but the pictured bones, the cracked “skin” of the ground on which some of them sit, and the “castles” are all existentially indebted to the same kind of event.

It is an event that very rarely and only very briefly occurs in this nigh-rainless place: the Hoarusib River in silt-laden flood, so close to the Atlantic’s “Skeleton Coast”.

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#9 in series: green riverbed)

 

This post’s photo (copyright Doug Spencer) was taken at 10.14 am on 14 November 2022, nearly twenty minutes after the previous post’s.

We were making our way back down to the bed of the Hoarusib River, which we would then drive along a little further inland, before turning left, into a canyon that the Hoarusib occasionally “invades”/floods.

That canyon has “sandcastles” that are vastly bigger – and enormously older/more durable – than any sandcastle on any seashore…as you will see in #11 & #12 of this series.

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#8 in series: thriving, sans soil & rain)

 

 

From 9.44 am through 10 am on 14 November 2022, the pictured rock and yours truly were sharing the very same hilltop.

Whilst the rock itself was an inanimate object, living beings very successfully occupied a deal of its exposed surfaces.

These beings are neither plants nor animals; as you can see, more than one species are obviously-present on this particular rock.

A lichen is a composite organism that emerges from algae or cyanobacteria living among the filaments (hyphae) of the fungi in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship.

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#7 in series: coat of many colours)

 

 

This post’s featured photo was taken from essentially the same vantage point as yesterday’s; both “clock time” and my feet had advanced barely at all.

However, turning my/my camera’s gaze in a different direction (looking northwest rather than southwest, I think) offered a very different view.

You are looking at many different minerals; in some cases, they comprise rocky hills/mountains.

Others are present as “grains of sand”…grains which have different densities, and which –  to a considerable and visible  extent – have been “sorted” by the wind.

The pink streaks are probably garnets.

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#6 in series: Hoarusib in context, closer view)

 

 

Although the vantage point remains the same, this post’s images were shot with a telephoto lens; effectively, their view of the Hoarusib River is nearly seven times “closer” than that offered by the image in this series’ previous post.

At this point, the river and its surrounding landscape are quite unlike where the Hoarusib – rarely, and briefly – delivers a readily-visible flow of fresh water to the “Skeleton Coast” edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

Yet, where I stood – and the stretch of the Hoarusib visible in these photos – are only circa 30 minutes’ drive from the river’s oft-dryish mouth.

In a straight line, the ocean is almost certainly rather less than 20 kilometres distant.

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#5 in series: Hoarusib River, in context)

 

 

I urge you to have a good look around: enlarge the featured image and zoom in on every element within a very complex landscape.

Finding the river is no great challenge.

However, you will need “eagle eyes” to be able to discern any evidence of the lightly-used access tracks on which “our” vehicles had travelled along some of the Hoarusib River’s lower reaches, and then up to the hilltop vantage point.

Within the photo’s field of view – which is similar to that of a naked-eyed human’s – those tracks are the only man-made feature.

No human lives here.

Not even a single signpost has been erected.

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#4 in series: complex reality)

 

All of this post’s photos were taken from the bed of the Hoarusib River, less than 20 kilometres from where it (on occasion) meets the Atlantic Ocean.

Here, rainfall is a very rare event.

The featured image shows ducks flying along a river; most of the time, terrestrial animals can walk across the lower reaches of the Hoarusib without wetting their feet.

The ducks’ presence is much less “surprising” than most people imagine.

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#3 in series: atop its edge “2”)

 

 

Our vantage point and the time/date were essentially “as per immediately-preceding post”, but instead of looking due west, to the Atlantic, this post has heads and camera turned in other directions.

To our east, south and north, the view was almost 100% “dunescape”.

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#2 in series: atop its edge “1”)

 

 

 

At 5. 26 pm on 14 November 2022 we stood on shifting sand, and in pleasantly cool air.

Below, in front of us, was the Atlantic Ocean, lapping Namibia’s “Skeleton Coast”.

We stood in a “sea” of sand – sand, only, it seemed.

However, the beach/coastal plain below us was clearly not devoid of vegetation.

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