Love birds and Go-away birds...

... fly around my house. The love birds even come to sit on the balcony, chatting very noisily. They must have offspring now as there are many of them, behaving a bit clumsy. Most of them are green with their rosy face, but there are 2 or 3 in white-blue-greyish colours. I wonder whether they escaped somewhere as these are not the natural colours.
The go-away birds are not less noisy, but they do not come that close. The story is that they warn the wild animals from hunters, shouting "go way" with their loud voices. It is the equivalent to the European jay.

grass insect

There are some funny animals around here. On my last walk I found this insect in the middle of the path laying eggs or something. When it sits on the grass you really cannot make it out.

Brandberg

Last weekend I spent in the Brandberg area. My friends already left on Thursday which was a public holiday, but unfortunately I had to work on Friday. This only left me with 3 free days and the task to find them in one of the gorges of a mountain massive with a diameter of 50km. I have never been there before and there are no road signs at the many tracks. However, my friends gave me a good description of the area and some printouts from google earth. I also bought topographic maps with a scale 1:50000. So I packed my car on Friday and left Windhoek with the first daylight on Saturday morning at 6 am. It took me 5h to Uis, the town nearest to the Brandberg. I thought this was not too bad, but then it only started. The road on the remaining 80km was incredibly bad, ripples all over. On top of this a yellow warning light in my car went on which made me nervous. So I drove very slowly, watching the mountain carefully and trying to identify described features. This was surprisingly easy and even the tracks that turned off from the "main" road were in the right place. Thus, 3h later I found my friends without difficulty. They were as glad to see me as I was, already imagining me camping on my own in the wild. They had cleared a path into a dry riverbed, a very romantic setting. We went for an evening walk and then sat around the fire, braaing and chatting. The others slept in their roof-top tents on their cars, but I just spread my sleeping bed on a mat on the floor, enjoying the free view to the stars. I was not disturbed by anything in the night, only noticed some bats hunting above my head. And it was ABSOLUTELY quiet, no sound at all at times, not even snoring neighbours ;-) What I had not considered was the mist rolling in from the coast only 60km away. So my sleeping bag was wet outside, but never mind, I was not cold. Next morning we set off to a trip up the mountain. This turned out to be harder than it looked because of huge bolders we had to climb over. It is amazing that we still always found a possible way. There were interesting plants all around: Welwitschias in the plain, reed in the now mainly dry creeks and somthing like a little stone garden further up. The view from the top was rewarding. The way down trained the muscles in the arms as well as the legs because we had to let ourselves down the bolders and jump from one to another. I still feel the muscle pain today, two days later. The whole tour took 7 hours. It followed another relaxing evening at the fire. Next morning we set off straight on the way back in order not to get into a Namibian traffic jam.

fontain

Last week we had a special entertainment in Windhoek: a fontain nearly as high as the building nearby in Independence Ave. I don't know whether it was a broken pipe or what, but the result was quite impressive and lasted for almost half an hour!

climbing hazard

Today I went climbing again and discovered some of these animals. I looked at them closely, marvelling at the beautiful colours. However, my friends told me that it burns and you get blisters when touch your skin and someone even mentioned that their bite can be deadly! I had not expected this animal to be that dangerous and looked at it with even more respect then. Luckily I did not meet it when I was up on the rock.
In a presentation on Saturday I heard that in Australia live 7 out of the 10 most poisonous snakes in the world while Namibia only has 1. How reassuring! Never mind that the next 10 poisonous snakes can still kill people and several of them exist in Namibia.

Pontok mountains

Last weekend I spent with a friend at the Spitzkoppe again. It is 8 months since I have been there and the landscape now looked totally different. Due to the good rains it was green everywhere and the flowers in blossom. We arrived at 8pm, in the dark, at the camp. The half moon was just above the mountain and run down its side which was great to watch. Thus we had light till after 9pm, enough to get our meal ready and ourselves settled in the sleeping bags under the starry sky. It was wonderful to wake up at night and look at the stars. In the morning we watched the sun dunking the Spitzkoppe into light. This time our aim was not Spitzkoppe itself, but a walk around the nearby Pontok mountains. A Pontok is a hut covered with a mud roof which looks like the peaks of this mountain range. We took our time, had a look at Small Bushman's Paradise first where you can see ancient rock paintings. I am always fascinated by the rock formations and caves in this area. It was a hot day and we had to climb over the saddle of the mountain to get to Big Bushman Paradise, but I thouroughly enjoyed the tour. Back in our camp I went on another small excursion to a rock formation called the bridge through which you can also see the mountains. Then I used the luxury of a rock pool which stays for about 3 months after the last rain to take a quick bath. I was back in time for the sundowner and then the usual ceremony of braai started. It followed another wonderful night under the open sky. Next day we tried to reach the top of the first Pontok, but we did not know the way. Surprisingly, we came across some way marks and climbed quite high over bolders and rocks until all possibilities ended at a steep wall. Without rope and proper climbing equipment there was no way to go further. I think next time we should try it from the other side. Anyway, it was a nice trip, we returned to the car and drove back to Windhoek just after lunch.

Moltkeblick

Last Sunday I decided to climb the second highest mountain in Namibia, Moltkeblick, with a friend. It is only 10km away from Windhoek. He has been there before, but years ago. The mountain is 2400m high, but you already start at about 1700m. We set off about 9am, asked at the farm for permission to walk on their property and then we are on our way. First we went along an old, disused farm track where grass and flowers grew on the way. My friend could not exactly remember the way he went once, so we just turned to the mountain range after a short while. We climbed up to the ridge and continued along there, first on a kind of path, then just through the bushes and bolders where there was space. We had a great view from up there. I found a lot of beautiful flowers along the way, some of them only come out every couple of years after a good rain. There was yellow and red and purple and white amongst the high, green grass. What looked so beautiful made walking harder, though, especially as one should look out for snakes as well. The longer we continued along the ridge the more evident it became that we should have stayed for much longer on the farm track. Our "way" was up and down, through deer fences and around cliffs. However, I found it a pleasant walk while my friend began to struggle and slow down. Finally, more than 6h later, we reached the top of Moltkeblick which was not very exciting. There was a wind motor and a signal post, all fenced in. So, the way has been much nicer than the destination. We had a short break and then started to make out way back down. This was not easy as the ground was full of medium large, loose stones and it would have been easy to break ones ankles. When we reached the foot of the mountain it was getting dark. We just about managed to identify the farm track and stayed on it through dusk. It was still several km back to the car, there was no moonlight and the way became harder and harder to follow. At some point we lost it and had to return to the nearest fence to find it again. Then we tried with a torch, but it was still very hard to identify the remainders of the track. I already thought we had to stay in the field over night. Finally, 12h after we set off, we reached the car, fairly tired, but happy.