With Nancy by my side at last (see photo proof below), the two of us did NOT spend a comfortable night in Bella’s mini house near the Windhoak airport to give Nancy a comfortable bed to recover in after the long overseas flight BECAUSE her flight to Cape Town was delayed in Washington DC and she missed her evening flight to Windhoek. SO, I enjoyed – and I really did enjoy – Bella’s mini house alone – Argh!
After collecting Nancy from the airport in Windhoek, we left for a 3-week journey through the northwestern section of Namibia, traveling through Damaraland and Naokoland up to the Angola border. In stark contrast to southwestern Namibia, which you will recall was virtually uninhabited except for a few scattered small settlements, Damaraland, and to a lesser extent Naokoland, is supposedly where the bulk of the human population lives, although we have yet to see many people or inhabited landscape other than along the main highway north of Windhoek. Despite the relative density of development in this region, there are some remote and wild places that we targeted on this part of our Namibian journey. Our first stop after leaving Windhoek was the Spitzkoppe Mountains:

The Spitzkoppe (German for “pointed dome”; also referred to as the “Matterhorn of Namibia”) is a group of bald granite peaks or inselbergs (isolated mountains or outcrops, or what we might call “monadnocks”) located in the Namib desert. The granite is more than 130 million years old and the highest outcrop rises 5,669 ft above sea level and 2,200 ft above the floor of the flat surrounding desert below.


Aside from the stunning geology, the Spitzkoppe is renowned for its many examples of ancient San (Bushman) rock art. Another fun fact: photographs of the Spitzkoppe Mountains were used as backgrounds for the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey in the “Dawn of Man” sequences. We did a short hike to a rock art panel that involved a chain-assisted climb of a couple of hundred of feet up a steep rock incline. Here’s pics of the climb and the cave with the rock art:





We camped for two nights at the base of the Spitzkoppe in one of the nicely private campsites nestled up against the rocks, and had one surprising campsite visitor, as seen below:



Unfortunately, despite my plans, we didn’t get the opportunity to do much hiking because it was all guided technical rock climbing, which was beyond our capabilities. So we simply enjoyed the landscape and the really fine camping weather. We had fun naming some of the rock features, such as this one:

We did manage to pick up several new bird species though, which was nice. OK< we are off to the Brandberg Massif for more rocks and rock art. See you there!
New Species:
- Sociable weaver
- Rosy-faced lovebird
- White-quilled bustard
- White-tailed shrike
- Feckled nightjar
- Chestnut-vented warbler
- Rupple’s parrot
Nice to see Nancy made it! Looks beautiful out there. Very cool about the rock art. Sisters Rock! 🪨
So glad you have the company of Nancy finally! So, my first instinct was an Oribi. Your descriptions and photos are really piquing our excitement about next summer.
Just in case anyone goes back to the blog to see other’s comments, if you were wondering what those two cute little dwarf antelope were at our Spitzkoppe campsite, they were Klipspringers.