Not to mention the yellowish rocks and pebbles, stacked with the art of millennia, that make up the stony mountain, in the shape of a whale, to which the Twyfelfontein Adventure Camp that shelters us rests.
Just arrived from the coast of Swakopmund, we instantly surrender to the lithic surrealism of the place. A stairway installed by the lodge facilitates the ascent to the top of the hill, frequented by guests, mainly to contemplate the sunset.
Dazzled by the peculiarity of the Namibian landscape for a long time, we conquered it more than an hour earlier, with time to appreciate the vastness of southern Kunene all around us, at almost 360º.
Several other mounds of the same crumble of dolomite dotted it out of sight, intersected by two of the roads that serve the area.
The distance still revealed to us plateaus with discordant pink or ocher tops.
Both to the north and south of the karst island that supported us, dense lines of vegetation insinuated themselves.
They were irrigated by the bed of the Aba-Huab river, underground at that time but, when the fulminating rainy season in Namibia arrived, a muddy torrent that carried everything forward.
As we would come to understand, the Aba-Huab and the Huab had long been the life-giving arteries.
The Twyfelfontein Adventure Camp proved to be just a whim of refinement in the ancestral ecosystem of that domain of Africa.
Atop Twyfelfontein Adventure Camp, waiting for Twilight Magic
With the sun descending over the mountains to the east, the hyracoids retreat to their burrows.
Lodge guests drop by and help themselves to drinks at the improvised bar among boulders.
They sit in the seats provided, walk around the panoramic edges of the elevation.
The big star does not take long to disappear.
It dyes that Namibia in pinks, lilacs and even purples that reinforce its already extraterrestrial look.
It darkens.
The sparkling space claims its dose of protagonism, with a unique rival in the illuminated facilities of the lodge.
There, around the dining room, a privileged multinational community gathered.
In those parts, as much as the sunset and the afterglow that ends it, the dawn and its own twilight represented stimuli that we were beginning to yearn for.
We slept huddled together from exhaustion. About dawn, we set out in search of the Aba-Huab.
Up the dry Aba-Huab River
He drives the jeep and guides us, Lucas, a descendant of an Angolan family who, when the destructive Civil War in Angola was raging, was forced to migrate south.
Lucas makes an effort to greet us with what little Portuguese he knows.
Until other passengers interrupt him and redirect him to the raid.
We passed most of the tents at Twyfelfontein Adventure Camp.
We went around the karst hill that welcomed it to the north. Soon, we veer south and onto a plain covered in yellowish hay.
Twyfelfontein and Fauna around the Aba-Huab Valley
Moments later, we saw ostriches and antelopes kudus. Following another jeep that had left first, Lucas goes down to the dry Aba-Huab sandy track.
We followed its twists and turns, among mopane trees, camel thorns and other types of acacias in which curious hornbills swarmed.
Unexpectedly, the necks and heads of giraffes emerge from the rough foliage.
One, two, three. Several more.
Adults, children, in a community relatively used to human presence and which, as such, tolerated our approach.
Lucas is satisfied with that quick and easy sighting.
Passengers on board share the same enthusiasm.
The Desert Elephants Damaraland
The guide knew, however, that the stars of the local fauna were different.
Keeping an eye on the footprints and feces on the riverbed, listening for incoming communications from other jeeps, he quickly located and revealed them.
A large herd of desert elephants, more than fifteen, as they are from a biome with less food and water, substantially smaller than their verdant savannah counterparts.
Due to living off the water, humidity and vegetation of this and other ephemeral rivers, they are used to seeing Namibian people and visitors aboard jeeps.
Accordingly, pachyderms are little or not bothered or react at all.
Only a more reguila calf decides to express indignation.
He pretends to invest and, for communal delight, with his little trunk, he throws dirt in our direction.
We remind you that the Aba-Huab river and the Huab to which it joins are the main supports of the region's flora and fauna.
They have long made the surrounding Namibia less desert-like and have attracted and maintained a range of species.
Aba-Huab and Huab, sources of River Life that come from the Stone Age
It is known, moreover, that during the Stone Age, between 6000 and 2000 years ago, the area was even more vegetated and that animals frequented it in greater abundance.
We found the site with the highest concentration of rock art in Namibia, Ui Aes (in the native Damara language, Twyfelfontein in the dialect Afrikans), just 9km from the homonymous lodge.
It occupies another range of karst hills, inhabited by lizards and prolific colonies of hyracoids.
There, an eagle with black skin but almost Caucasian features welcomes us under a blue sky that matches the rocky ocher.
It takes us to the most famous petroglyphs, among the estimated five thousand.
Theories around the “Lion Man” petroglyph and others
We follow it along the trail of "Lion Manso named because it leads to an engraving of a lion with a tusk in its mouth, five toes on each paw, and a long tail raised in an L.
These last peculiarities led some scholars to state that it was, in reality, a man, in this case, a shaman, transforming himself into a lion.
On the same face of the same ocher rock, he is surrounded by a giraffe, kudus and different antelopes, rhinos and others.
In more than a dozen clusters of nearby rocks, there are also oryx, ostriches, flamingos and zebras.
Certain prints show human and human-animal figures, as is the case with the Dancing Kudu.
Still others reveal geometric patterns, animals depicted with lines of movement that scholars claim are a consequence of the trance into which shamans enter during rituals.
As with the "Lion Man”, an easily debunked theory.
Over the millennia and occupation, they followed the San hunter-gatherers, the ethnic KhoiKhoi shepherds (damara/nama) who subsist in Namibia.
And in recent times, the german settlers and the Afrikaners from South Africa who, at least in part, replaced the Germans in the its colonies from until defeat in World War I
Ui Aes / Twyfelfontein: the Unusual Colonial History
Despite its historical importance, Ui Aes / Twyfelfontein was only declared a National Monument by the South African authorities in 1952. Even so, it remained unprotected until 1986.
And only in 2007 did it see its status as Universal Heritage awarded by UNESCO.
As a result, a lodge (the Twyfelfontein Country Lodge) was erected on what is considered the Place of Ancestral Ceremonies. We also come across the ruins of an old rural house with a European structure.
Ui Aes / Twyfelfontein remained free of settlers of European origin until shortly after the 2nd World War.
By that time, a tragic drought meant that Boer farmers had settled there, hoping that the proximity of the rivers and a specific spring would make their existence possible.
One settler in particular, David Levin, dedicated himself to studying the reliability of such a spring, which he found, but from which he was unable to obtain enough water for his crops and livestock.
And the no less Rare Origin of the name Twyfelfontein
A friend nicknamed him David Twyfelfontein, translatable by “David doubt the source”, or “David nascent doubtful”. In 1948, David Levin himself registered his property under that playful name.
In 1963, the farm was integrated into the Odendaal Plan (1963) for the ethnic reorganization of South Africa under the apartheid regime.
Two years later, more than a decade after the beginning of the scientific investigation of the engravings, the Boer settlers left the area, further south and back to South Africa.
The name Twyfelfontein, that one, stayed on par with the native Ui Aes. As have thousands of local Stone Age artworks.
Now, properly valued and protected, hopefully forever.
