The Trees of Deadvlei – Petrified Witnesses of Namib Desert

At the end of the funnel reaching into the big red dune giants of Namib Desert, that is Tsauchab River, is a place that could not be more unreal: the Deadvlei. The white clay pan is the stage of petrified acacia trees being up to 500 years old. Trees being so typical for the landscape of the Black Continent.… Read More

Namib at Sunrise – Aerial Images of the Desert

With more than 80 million years of existence, Namib desert is the oldest on Earth. With day temperatures easily exceeding 120 °F it is also one of the world’s most hostile places. Despite all inhospitality it boasts with beauty, especially at sunrise or in the evening hours. Then the desert becomes on eye candy made by giant dunes, strong contrasts and hidden structures, that are being revealed best when seen from above with a helicopter flight… Read More

Dune 45 – Sunrise above Namib desert

The giant red dunes of Namib desert belong to the worldwide tallest of its kind. They pile up at Sossusvlei, were Tsauchab River disappears in the sand of Namibia. Only one of those sand heaps may be climbed, that is the dune at kilometre 45. It rises up some ~170 metres high and is built by 5-million-year old sand deposits of the Kalahari.… Read More

Small Stinkers – The seal puppies of Cape Cross

If conditions are good, then life in Africa becomes literally exuberant. One of those places is Cape Cross, where about 250.000 brown fur seals romp about the cold but rich in nutriment waters of Benguela Current. The home of one of the largest seal colonies of the black continent has a large kindergarten full of cute seal puppets, but out in the water lie great white sharks in ambush… Read More

The hippo baby of St. Lucia

Around St. Lucia, in the very East of South Africa, climate becomes tropically sticky and doesn’t let you sleep well. Where Swaziland isn’t far away and the waters of the Indian Ocean surge, the cohesive coastline scatters creating a lagoon landscape being an El Dorado for hundreds of hippos.… Read More

Kolmanskop Ghost Town – Diamond Fever in the Namib Desert

Against the background of the imperial endeavours of Great Britain and France, Germany’s colonial adventures started late. One of those liaisons, that even today sparks a yern to see distant places, is German South-West Africa, nowadays Namibia, where at the turn of the century diamonds got found. The story of that boom tells Kolmanskop; the once richest settlement of Africa existed only to wring the gem stones from the desert but is now an abandoned ghost town being reconquered by the sand of the Namib… Read More