day 5: damaraland to swakapmund (namibia)

On day 5 Jennifer and I left Damaraland at sunrise to drive across a landscape that had received its first major rain in three years only two weeks prior.  So, it looked a fantastic green--the desert in bloom.  We drove past huge outcroppings of red-orange sandstone that lit up in the morning sun and dodged cows that roamed free throughout the landscape.  The only people we saw lived in shacks and maintained the herds of cows, besides two roadside stops, where a nearly naked Himba impersonator, with breasts bared, would try to motion us off the road to buy trinkets from her stand.  The Himba tribes in Northwestern Namibia are famous for retaining their ancient culture and are often visited as a tourist attraction.  The Himba tribe visit was something we cut out of our original plans.

To arrive at the coast of Namibia we needed to cross a vast desert that contained almost no vegetation.  There were a couple of succulent bushes that were able to absorb moisture from fog or mist once we came within 20 miles of the coast.  In this vast desert we were fortunate to come across a brown hyena--one of the rarest predators in Africa.  Sadly, the hyena was dead on the road and had been hit earlier that morning or in the night.  Brown hyenas are almost never seen because they move through the desert at night and are solitary animals covering vast amounts of space to find food.

The fur seal colony was interesting, but smelled so awful that it almost wasn't worth the trip.  There were just as many living seal pups as there were dead seal pups and the flies were swarming us in the summer sun.  The pictures were fun to take and the living seal babies would cry to us as we walked by them over the boardwalk.  The seals--both mothers and babies were gathered under the boardwalk to hide from the sun, or at least that is our reason for this behavior.  Thousands of seals were gathered on the beach, with each male having a harem of multiple females.  All of the seals needed to compete for space, which created a cacophony of grunts and yelps.  Mother seals need to hunt for food every few days, then return to find their pup on the beach midst this ruckus--not an enviable job.  

One of the most amazing parts of this picture is the green grass--all of the grazers seemed pretty happy with it.

This is the Brandberg Mountain, which rises strait out of the desert.  It is not part of any mountain chain and is over 6,000 feet tall.

This is the brown hyena--note how long the fur is.  Brown Hyenas, differing from the more common spotted hyena, are more like wolves of the desert.  They have small family groups and often hunt alone for small game

We wanted to take the seal pups home after a few of these shots.

This is the elevated boardwalk in which the seals were hiding.  We think the mothers might have given birth under the boardwalk as well.

A bull seal shows off his bulk.

This is a female seal sleeping off exhaustion, while baby seals gather just within reach of the surf.  I imagine the baby seals are waiting for their mothers to return with a meal.

In this picture you can see the density of seals on the beach in addition to the number of seals in the water.  We did not see any shark fins appear above the surface.