Travelling in Namibia is multi-dimensional. As you move from region to region in this vast and beautiful country, you also move through time. Our Namibian road-trip begins at Fish River Canyon, which traces its origins back hundreds of millions of years to a time when Africa was part of the Gondwana super-continent. Our next stop is the ghostly white clay pan of Deadvlei with its blackened tree trunks, formed as far back as a thousand years ago. Then we head to a small rocky outcrop south of Luderitz on Namibia’s wild Atlantic coast; Diaz Point is named after a Portuguese explorer who made an important contribution to navigation in the late 1400s. Finally, we end up in the ghost town of Kolmanskop, a diamond mining settlement, whose sudden rise in 1908 was followed by a similarly rapid decline after just twenty years. Join the journey!
The Fish River Canyon is the second largest canyon in the world. Some 160 kilometres long, nearly 30 kilometres wide, and 550 meters deep, it traces its origins back some 650 million years to a time when plate tectonics lowered a section of the plain to enable the flow of what we call today the Fish River. At first, the Fish River merely caused surface erosion, because the sub-base here is thick solid rock. However, about 300 million years ago a period of glaciation deepened the canyon, which enabled the Fish River finally to cut through the surface rock. Then, about 60 million years ago as Gondwana – comprising Antarctica, India, parts of the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Australia – was splitting apart, the Fish River received a further boost to its erosive powers. The separation of South America from Africa in particular caused the African landmass to rise, which increased the gradient of the canyon. With a faster flow, the Fish River to able to cut through a second layer of rock to produce the two-step canyon shape we see today.
Fast-forward to approximately a thousand years ago. Some 500 kilometres north-north-west of the main viewpoints over the Fish River Canyon, you would have encountered another river, now long gone, meandering through what we today call Sossusvlei. The climate around Sossusvlei at this time was getting drier and sand dunes were beginning to form. After about 200 years of dune formation, a small section of the river and its surrounding banks, which were covered with camel thorn trees, became cut off and isolated from the rest of the flow. The area quickly dried and formed a white clay pan. This area is called Deadvlei. So dry and hot is Deadvlei that the camel thorn trees have never rotted. Instead, they have blackened and hardened and been preserved to this day.
Around the time the trees were blackening in Deadvlei, Batolomeu Diaz, a Portuguese sea captain, was making his way south along the African coast in two 50 tons carvels. He was the first European ever to make it this far south along the west coast of Africa and he would eventually become the first European to round the Southern tip of the continent. Diaz’s journey must have been hell. The winds in these parts are strong and southerly, so he would have had to tack all along this dangerous coastline. Due to bad weather, Diaz was forced one day to cast anchor in a bay. Next to the bay, on a small rocky outcrop, he would, on 25 July 1488, erect a cross in dedication to Sao Thiago. Today, this place is known as Diaz Point. While religious zealousness hints at no shortage of irrationality on his part, Diaz nevertheless made an important contribution to navigation. It is because of his observations on his journey along the African coastline that all sailors today know that the most efficient way to approach the southern tip of Africa is not close to shore, but rather well out to sea to the west of the continent.
The final stop, for now, on our Namibian journey through time and space is Kolmanskop, a ghost town slowly being covered in sand some thirty kilometres north-east of Diaz Point. In its glory days, Kolmanskop was a thriving diamond mining town, which boasted the first X-ray machine in the southern hemisphere. The town was founded by German miners in 1908. The insane wealth accumulated through the diamond discoveries by the early arrivals soon attracted others and the town materialised. Even so, Kolmanskop’s time as a thriving human community was to be brief. The town entered decline soon after World War I as the diamond field began to yield less and less. The discovery in 1928 of the largest ever diamond deposit on easily accessible beaches just 270 kilometres south of Kolmanskop further hastened the town’s decline. Many inhabitants simply left, leaving everything behind. By 1956, Kolmanskop was completely abandoned to the sands. The BBC documentary Wonders of the Universe used Kolmanskop to illustrate the concept of entropy. Numerous films and photoshoots have also made use of the ghost town on account of the powerful sense of the passage of time it imparts.
Namibia is beautiful, yet humbling, reminding us that we live very brief lives.
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