Twyfelfontein - Damaraland

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Our next stop was Twyfelfontein. This was about a 5 hour trip from Swakopmund - along the C35 and the D2612 and we filled up with fuel at Uis. The usual expanse, scenery, sky etc - still amazing! Twyfelfontein lodge was one of David’s favourites because it had a buffet for breakfast and dinner - lots of choice, and lots of food, and lots of different puddings - he was VERY happy! Not that the food had been bad anywhere - but it was very good here! Anyway the attractions in the Twyfelfontien area are: a petrified forest, rock paintings and engravings, ‘organ pipes’ and burnt mountain. Well - if you ask David - the food was the best thing in the area and was worth going there for! I am glad we saw the petrified forest and the rock paintings and engravings … but the organ pipes and the burnt mountain … well … if you haven’t seen them - you haven’t really missed anything! We saw them in the middle of the day, and I think the burnt mountain is best seen at sunset when it appears to ‘burn’ a myriad of colours. The Petrified Forest is basically a few logs that have turned to stone. I enjoyed it - our guide Sylvia was Damara and taught me how to say ‘How are you?’ (Mdisa) and the reply of ‘Good’ (/aiya - with the / indicating a click!) - I tried to master it and I think I did OK - but Sylvia laughed! Anyway the logs were originally conifer trees that were washed down from central Africa - about 250 million years ago (humans appeared on the planet only about 5 million years ago - so when the logs were being washed down there were no humans on the planet at all!). They were then covered with sand and gypsum and this created perfect conditions for the silica to form and to turn the wood into stone. They don’t know when they were uncovered, but they were discovered in the 1940s. They look exactly like wood, you can see the rings on some of the trunks, but they are definitely stone. Some of the logs are quite long, one is standing, but most are either broken up or less than a metre/a yard in length. From there we drove to the rock paintings and engravings. Our guide here was Suzanna (also from the Damara tribe, and so I tried out my only Damara words - she laughed too! We took the short up hill 40 minute route as it was nearing mid-day and very hot. I was pleased too that we saw these paintings and engravings. They are between 2 and 6 thousand years old, and were drawn by the Bushmen when they lived in the area. The mountain/kopje was made up of lots of boulders many of which had fallen down from their original position, so there are probably lots of other paintings and engravings to be discovered, but are covered up at the moment. We saw two engravings and one painting. The engravings would have been cut much deeper in the sandstone originally, but the sandstone, being quite soft, had been eroded, but you could still see the engravings of animals including giraffe and kudu and the images of waterholes clearly. The painting that we saw was of Bushmen and animals, none of which had any heads because the original paint was white (I think it was made from ostrich egg shell) and this had been washed off years ago, but the red ochre paint for the bodies was still clearly visible. They are not sure whether these paintings and engravings were doodles, maps or some way to pass on knowledge, or to record things. We did drive after lunch to the organ pipes (basalt rock) and the burnt mountain - but they are not really worth mentioning!!

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Photos

David enjoying a beer in the bar at Twyfeltontein Lodge
...taking in the view in comfort!