Anyway, we started our trip by meeting up in Upington. There was a bit of a fiasco when I went with Noah to pick up our rental car in Kimberley (due apparently to my poor line of credit), but after some desperate pleading and signing a couple minor organs away as collateral, we managed to scrape through with Noah's card.
The next day we got right to it, descending into the Fish River Canyon which was pretty close to as spectacular as advertised. I heard from several people that it's the second-largest canyon in the world (which seems like a rather difficult thing to measure),
Nevertheless, it's a spectacular canyon and made for an amazing (if rather blistery) hike. One jarring difference with US canyons is that the Fish River basically dries up in the wintertime. With no mountains to provide a little runoff during the dry season, it was a bare trickle down there in between large pools. Yet the high water mark was way up the canyon walls, at 100,000+ cfs at least. Namibia is bloody enormous and the Fish River drains about half of it. I'd be interested to see if anyone has run it before while the rains are going. The gradient was very steep, especially at the top; I'd imagine it'd be pretty gnarly.
Not as large as some rivers.
Another difference I noticed was the constant beaches. Most of the beach sand in US river systems is currently collecting heavy metals in a reservoir somewhere.
On the second day we had a relaxing soak in Palm Springs, which came out of the wall at a scalding 57 C. It was rather challenging hiking, actually, and we needed the break. There were many sections of deep sand or precarious scrambling over large rocks. I was thankful for all the childhood practice jumping around on boulders. Later, the canyon opened up a bit and it got a little easier.
All in all, though we did get a bit lost once trying to take a shortcut, it was a beautiful hike, definitely worth the pain inflicted on my feet. After we finished up we stayed a night at the Ai-Ais resort and drove to the Sossusvlei area, site of the highest sand dunes in the world. We did have some mechanical troubles, but luckily Kristen was there to rescue us.
Sometimes I miss my truck.
Now it's time to get back to work. Ugh.
What's the word? Stark?
You have reaffirmed my desire to visit namibia!
ReplyDeleteMy guess would be, assuming they were actual intrusions and not lava flows, that they were a dolerite or gabbro. If they were lava flow then they would be basalt. It all depends on the crystal size, if they had fairly fine, but somewhat visible crystals, I would say they were dolerit and not gabbro.- geologist sister
ReplyDeleteYou are right it is an intrusion and its name shall be dolerite-anonymous who would have enjoyed the title of amateur geologist
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