Namibia's Diverse Environment

Namibia is dry, negative humidity!! I might need the rest of the summer to get re-hydrated. 

Namibia has one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. 

Windhoek sits in the center of a ancient volcano and is surrounded by mountains. The land is mainly a flat bush  Outside of Windhoek. As we got further North there were mountains and Naukluft Camp in The Namib-Naukluft National Park  reminded me of Sabino Canyon in Arizona. The weather is changing in Namibia as a result of global climate changes and is often erratic. It rains in cloud bursts. So one farmer may get a lot of rain and have good vegetation through the winter and his neighbor may get no rain and his land is struggling. This also can cause unexpected flash flooding, because it may have rained north and all of a sudden the rivers fill and flood 100 miles south of where it actually rained. 

                                 a dry river bed in Kruger National Park

                               Photo Credit: Rachael Costello

I didn't realize but There are different ecosystems with a desert. Within the Namib Desert there is the semi-desert where the are small bushes and low scrub grass but can still support grazing animals like oryx, springbok, bat eared foxes and ostriches. Then there is the high desert on top of plateaus, where smaller animals like squirrels and birds can survive. Then there is the rock desert where there is really no vegetation just barren gravel areas, then there is what most people think of when they think of the desert soft, fine sand of shifting sand dunes. In Namibia these sand dunes can be tradition sand colored or in Sossusvlei the sand attracts iron and the moisture turns it to red iron oxide. The sand dunes if Sossusvlei are actually fossilized underneath the soft sand. Even on these inhospitable sand dunes we saw bugs eeking  out a life. Sossusvlei gets more tourists than Etosha National Park. 

                                                                The many faces of the Namib Desert                                          
                                                                    Photo Credit: Rachael Costello

The Namib Dessert meets the Atlantic Ocean and there is a whole coastal climate similar to San Francisco where the cold ocean air is pulled inland 50 or so miles.

                            Sand dunes of Namib Desert meet the Atlantic
                                  Photo Credit: Rachael Costello

Etosha is diverse in itself. it has dense bush and near the pan everything is covered with a fine white calcite dust that blows off the pan. A pan is a huge dry waterhole that rarely or in some cases annually fills to a shallow pool. 

                               The Etosha Pan
                                   Photo Credit: Rachael Costello

The green tint on the Etosha Pan in picture above is actually algae.  

A watering hole is a spring fed body of water that holds water year round.

                  Water hole in Ethosa National Park
                    Photo Credit: Rachael Costello

Etosha also has huge open grass lands where huge herds of zebra, wildebeest, 

Springbok, and giraffes graze. 

                   grassy plains in Etosha National Park
                            Photo Credit: Rachael Costello

North along the Okavango River in Caprivi Strip the environment is tropical. We had considered trying to see it but after a 13 hour driving day, it was decided that it was still too far.