Namibia Skeleton Coast - Leg/Day 2
'Kuidas' bush camp, Huab River valley, Terrace bay, Hoarusib Valley, 'Leylandsdrift' bush camp
With the cessnas parked for a well deserved night's rest, we headed off to the'Kuidas' bush camp. A casual twenty minutes landrover drive farther up the gentle North slope of the valley. On the Kuidas camp stopover that evening/night and the next morning, we reportedly would have much to enjoy . Warm Schoeman family hospitality and fine bush camp comfort welcomed us while sunset shaded the Huab River valley and set the framing mountain ridges around in a golden glow.
A surprising mini oasis with a few trees, lush green shrubs and thickets of yellow reeds. A few oryxes grazing unperturbed on the slope below. A few songbirds giving us company arms length close by. A setting feeling almost surreal amids the surrounding vast expense of bone dry desert mountains. A mini green oasis which also in satellite view on Google maps stands out clearly. On the drive the next morning we would explore the surrounding mountain rock formations, including ancient rock paintings and petroglyphs.
As the following images and the short story( link below) capture and convey, 'Kuidas' is a magically interesting and beautiful site. One in which the modest small footprint camp accomodations blend naturally preserving the oasis and desert wilderness character.
Kuidas bush camp located on the North slope of the Huab River valley. Images source: Google maps
The bush camp set in its intriguing green mini oasis
'Kuidas' ahead - Green mini oasis framed by contrasting browns and reds of the surrounding bone dry Huab River valley mountains
The parked cessnas visible from the 'Kuidas' bush camp.
The (table) mountain ridge behind the plain is made up of a sequence of several basalt lava flows. Individual lava flows are visible as the horizontal dark bands in the upper half of the mountain ridge. Back in geological times, between 140 and 130 million years ago these lavas formed and then covered as a continuous plateau an extensive area of present day NW Namibia and Southern Angola. Later through geological time, rivers systems have developed which have cut deep into the plateau and have eroded away large parts of it (as is the case in the Huab River valley).
The sleeping cabins evenly spaced out along the terrace edge.
Beautiful desert mountain vista. Overlooking the gently sloping plain down to the ephermal Huab River and the mountains behind.
Oasis vegetation covered in dew lights up shiny, touched by the first sunrise light sweeping across the valley slope.
A small grassy patch with artesic water upwelling to the surface. Henk Schoeman inspects the 'wildlife' cam hidden in the tree trunk.
Mountain Chat (Oenanthe monticola)
Sickle-winged Chat (Emarginata sinuata)
Exploring the rock formations on the slopes above the Kuidas bush camp. Walking on red brown-coloured sandstones of the Early Cretaceous. These were massive sand dunes just like the Sossusvlei ones we climbed yesterday. These are just some 130 million years older.
A pictograph of an antilope. Ancient rock art in the sandstone formations, discovered by the Schoemans.
Pictograph of (possibly) a zebra. The various dark brown figures at the base may depict various utensils of the hunter people.
Helga Schoeman demonstrates the various rock powder pigments which she scratched from various rock chips found at the rock art site. Such pigments were used by the ancient inhabitants of the Kuidas 'oasis' to produce their 'rock art' images.
Helga Schoeman points at petroglyphs on the flat surface of a large sandstone block. Chisseled out on the surface are numerous human footprints all pointing in the same direction. The edge of the sandstone surface is ornamented by saw-tooth cuts all around the block.
These petroglyphs give the sandstone block the appearance of a sacred stone. Its once purpose and possible sacred ritual function left to our imagination and speculation.
Circular arrangements of sandstone slabs contour the outlines of what appear to have been small huts of the ancient hunter inhabitants. There are no traces of wood & skin cover materials. These may have weathered away since the ancient times, or, were perhaps simply carried on by these (nomadic) hunter people when they abandoned the site. Down in the distance the greens outline the contour of the upper 'Kuidas' terrace.
Henk Schoeman giving his passionate tale about the ancient hunter people of 'Kuidas'
Back from an exciting visit to the ancient 'foot- & fingerprints' of the vanished 'Kuidas' hunter people. Standing at the base of the sandstone cliff imagening the geological history of the area when these were wind-blown sanddunes some 130 million years ago.
It is from these porous sandstones which outcrop immediately behind the Kuidas site that the green oasis receives its steady year around flow of artesian water. Water that accumulates in the sandstone aquifer lying deep underground in the mountains which rise to the North of Kuidas and the Huab River valley.
A truly magic site where one's mind time travels back and forth through realms of geology, anthropology, geography, climatology, and biology. Trying to piece together the various parts of an intriguing puzzle of the Kuidas oasis and its inhabitants (ancient and present).
I have tried to capture and convey the magic of the 'Kuidas' site in a separate short story (link below).
'Pencil rock' formation
When basalt lavas flow out at the earth surface these crystallize quickly into ultra fine grained rocks. When through later geological times such rocks are subjected to tectonic pressures, a set of parallel fractures (cleavage) forms in the rock oriented at a right angle to the pressure direction. When subjected to more pressures phases acting in different directions, multiple crossing sets of cleavage fractures may form. Here (at least) two fracture sets oriented at almost a right angle to each other cut the basalt rock into thin 'pencil/rod'-shaped parts. The rusty brown colouring of the rock is caused by later deposition of iron (oxides) along the fracture/cleavage surfaces.
These (deformational) 'pencils' are not to be confused with the typical 'columnar structures' found in many basalt formation around the world. These column structures form as a result of a molten basalt lava flow at the surface cooling into a solid basalt rock formation. Shrinking of the cooling lava rock volume causes formation of a set of fractures in a regular hexagonal pattern. Thus forming the typical columnar structures resembling 'organ pipes'.
This agave-like plant needs little if anyting in the way of soil to root and grow in. It roots down into the vertical (cleavage) rock fractures.
Helga and Henk, checking out desert shrub features.
Ready to take off again, ..... leaving 'Kuidas' bush camp
These are fine examples of socalled 'sickle dunes', also known as 'barchan dunes'. Their typical cresent shape result from the wind blowing constantly in the same direction. That is in this image from top left to bottom right . The cresents two tips always point/extend in the down-wind direction. The dunes as a whole shift down-wind as sand along the up-wind dune face is blown away and moving sand settles again along/over the steep down-wind dune back face. Here their shapes are 'texbook' regular because the wind blows and the dunes shift over an almost perflectly smooth and flat rock surface.
Here the dune ridges are packed closely together. Where they connect dune shapes change from cresents to more linear parallel sets aligned at a right angle to the wind direction.
Note the sister plane providing a good measure of scale !