August 4-5: Brandberg

After our brief but pleasant visit to Spitzkoppe, we headed northwest for a few hours along some more lonely gravel roads to the Brandberg Massif:

The Brandberg Massif is a giant granitic intrusion (which is typically created by magma that boils up from below but doesn’t emerge to flow as lava on the surface) that forms a dome-shaped massif, with a smattering of basalitc rocks (which form from lava flowing on the surface). It originated during the Early Cretaceous period about 130 million years ago during the rifting that led to the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean. Here’s a satellite image (borrowed from the internet) to give you the full impression of what this dome-shaped massif jutting up from the surrounding plains looks like – pretty cool hey:

Here are a few more pictures of the Brandberg and surrounding plains. Note the Green Dragon on the plains below in one of the pics, where it is thoroughy enjoying driving the sand tracks across the plains.

Like the Spitzkoppe, the Brandberg is a spiritual site of great significance to the San (Bushman) tribes. The most famous rock art is known as “The White Lady” located on a rock face with other rock art under a small rock overhang at the foot of the mountain. The White Lady, after it’s initial naming, was later determined to actually be a male shamen. Some of the monochromatic drawings in the panel are dated to more than 5,000 years old, while the polychromatic (i.e., multi-colored) drawings date to around 2,000 years old. There is even a penguin painting on the panel suggesting there was some trans-continental communication (nearest penguins are in southern South Africa) even during these early times. We have seen a lot of rock art panels, both here and in the American Southwest, and I must say this is one of the most impressive set of pictographs that I have ever seen. The ravine it is located in contains more than 1,000 rock shelters, as well as more than 45,000 rock paintings (although we have read and heard variations of from 20,000 to 100,000 paintings) – clearly, this was a very important place for the San! Of course, we did the 2.5 km trek up the valley to the White Lady rock art panel. Here’s some pics:

We camped in the Brandberg Nature Reserve at the White Lady Lodge and Campsite. Our site was situated under a huge acacia tree on a sandy floodplain. We had lots of avian visitors to the trees around us, which provided some good midday entertainment:

From the Wildside:

Next stop, a UNESCO World Heritage Site – you guessed it, because of the ancient rock art. See you there!