Namib desert minerals. The most ancient Namib desert and the huge Dead Vlei basin
The desert is considered one of the driest and most unattractive places to live on our planet. It is characterized by a flat surface and very specific flora and fauna. There are rocky, saline, snowy, clayey and sandy deserts. They occupy 20% of all land on the planet. One of the brightest representatives of sandy deserts is the Namib.
General information
The unusual name of the Namib Desert comes from a word from the Nama language that means “a place where there is nothing.” The formation of the Namib Desert began millions of years ago in a world ruled by dinosaurs. A characteristic feature of it is the extremely low amount of precipitation (no more than 13 mm per year). This has led to the fact that people practically do not live in this territory. The only exceptions are a few cities located on the Atlantic coast. The Namib Desert is the oldest on the planet. Such a long period of existence could not but affect the living inhabitants of this place, so here you can find several species of animals and plants that are endemic, that is, their distribution area is limited only to the Namib Desert. Over the centuries, they have invented mechanisms that help them survive in such harsh climates. The reasons for the formation of the Namib Desert are different. But the main one is its proximity to the Bengal Current, which runs close to the southern coast of the African continent.
Physiographic location
Where is the Namib Desert located? The question is quite simple. It is located in southwest Africa. Geographers divide it into three zones. They look like stripes that run along the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. The first of these is the coastal strip. It is very narrow, and the ocean acts directly on it. The second is the outer Namib. It is located in the western desert. The last one is the inland Namib, which has the most continental location. Between these parts there are areas of transition. The desert landscape is varied. Here you can find rocky mountains, in which several rivers have cut deep gorges over many centuries. But most of this place is covered with yellow or red sand. It was washed out from the Orange River and other water streams that flow in a westerly direction. The Namib Desert also boasts the world's tallest dune. Its height is 383 m.
Water reserves
If water is found in this place, it comes here from the inland plateau. Full-flowing rivers are very rare, there are only two of them. The first is the Orange River, which flows on the border with the Republic of South Africa. The second is Cunene, which carries its waters on the border with Angola. But several times a year a miracle happens, and powerful rains fall over the desert, filling even the smallest riverbeds. They rarely reach the ocean; more often they simply get lost among the sand dunes. The interesting thing is that sometimes water seeps under the sands and flows there, forming a runoff. People use these underground streams to supply water to the few villages that exist here.
Weather conditions
The coastal zone of the Namib Desert is practically devoid of rain at all. But thanks to the proximity of the ocean, the humidity here is always high and almost normal. The Bengal Current cools the air currents, which leads to dense fogs. Therefore, navigation in this area is very limited, and shipwrecks often occur. The air temperature practically does not change either with the change of season or with the change of day and night. It constantly stays between +10 and +16 degrees Celsius. The interior regions of the desert warm up to +31, and places that are completely devoid of ocean influence swelter at +38 and above. At night, the Namib Desert will make an unprepared wanderer shiver, because in some places the temperature drops to 0 degrees. Rain in this place is very rare. He hasn't been here for years. But if it does come, it will be a huge downpour. Morning dew is the saving grace for all living beings. For flora and fauna it is even more important than rare precipitation.
Animals and plants
Desert vegetation depends on the zone in which it grows. Succulents live near the ocean. They are able to obtain water from dew and fog. The outer Namib has virtually no vegetation of any kind. The steppe zone can remain bare for years, but with the arrival of rains, perennial and annual low grasses bloom here, which escape the sun underground. Surprisingly, the dunes are also covered with many species of tall grasses and shrubs. Trees can grow on the banks of rivers. The most common one here is acacia. In the south there are shrubs that survive winter rains and are able to withstand summer heat. One of the most interesting and unique plants thriving here is tumboa (welwitschia). It consists of only two huge leaves that slowly grow over 1000 years, or even more. But the sheets reach no more than three meters in length, as they are erased by the wind. The fauna consists of several species of antelope, ostriches, elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, hyenas, jackals, and sometimes zebras. Some mosquitoes, spiders, geckos and snakes also live here.
Population
The Namib Desert was not inhabited until the 20th century. Nomads from the San (Bushmen) people appeared on its territory only occasionally. They collected everything that could be eaten here, and used the juice of local plants as water. Today, there are several settlements, but most of this desert still remains deserted. In the steppe regions, farms are founded that specialize in raising desert sheep. The northern and central territories were made into a protected area, which is designed to preserve the rarest animals and plants. The land between the Orange and Qusseib rivers is a restricted area due to diamond mining. The Namib Desert has only four large cities. The first of these is Swakopmund. It is considered the summer capital of Namibia. This is a resort town. But its development is also connected with nearby uranium mines. The port city is Walvis Bay. It was annexed to Namibia only in 1994. Another small port in the south of the country is Lüderitz. It is famous for catching and processing lobsters. The city of Oranjemund is located at the mouth of the Orange River. Its population is involved in the mining of diamonds, for which the Namib Desert is famous. Photos show that it is crossed by several paved highways and railroad tracks.
Thus, among all the deserts, the Namib stands out primarily for its age. It is also home to plants and animals that cannot be seen anywhere else in the world.
What is a desert? According to the Nama tribe of southwest Africa, this is “a place where there is nothing.” This is how the name of the Namib Desert is translated. The country of Namibia, on whose territory this desert is located, is the oldest on earth, and got its name from this name. This is one of the few places on our planet where climatic conditions have not changed since the time of the dinosaurs. It is also the foggiest desert on Earth and the area with the tallest sand dunes.
The Namib Desert originated 80 million years ago. Its vast expanses (more than 100,000 sq. km) are inhabited by creatures that cannot be found anywhere else: these are endemics that have adapted to the harsh conditions of the area over millions of years. These are some species of insects (for example, darkling beetles) and desert plants that are accustomed to heat: the average summer temperature in the heart of the Namib is 31 C, and in the canyons - 38 C. But the cool shores of the Namib Desert are teeming with living creatures: there are many nesting seabirds here.
Surprisingly, the desert coast, stretching along the Atlantic Ocean, in the area of the Bengal Current, attracts seals and penguins.
Quite strange to see them on African shores! And, nevertheless, the Antarctic inhabitants nest here with pleasure, because the temperature on the desert coast is from 10 to 16 C.
The Namib Desert is also famous for its huge dunes. It is here that the tallest dune in the world is located; its height is 383 meters. Photographers love to photograph elephants against the backdrop of the bright orange dunes of this desert: the giants of the animal world seem tiny!
In the north, the sands give way to bare rocks and stone wastelands, between which lie valleys with dune fields that are sparser than in the southern part.
The Namib is crossed by two rivers - the Orange and the Kunene, but they are unable to revive these lifeless spaces. The remaining rivers, less full-flowing, are lost in mud depressions between the dunes (they are called “vlei”) and in salt marshes. Their beds fill with water only once every few years, when rare but very heavy rainfalls pass over the plateau.
On the coast, rains are very rare, one might say that they don’t exist at all. However, the air humidity is very high due to its proximity to the ocean. Because of this, the coastal part of the Namib Desert is a real kingdom of fog.
Strong currents and frequent fogs caused the death of many ships. Gradually, the coastline is encroaching on the ocean, so some of the skeletons of sunken ships are now located not on the seabed, but in the desert sands.
Last night there was a smell of Time in the air... This happens in the amazing and changeable world of Mars. But we were on Earth! And yet, a line from a book by a favorite writer was spinning in my head. Why, Time was felt here by all kinds of senses. And it would be strange if it were otherwise - the prehistoric past of the planet stretched to the very horizon and surrounded us. That night we felt the special energy of this great and eternal space - the Namib Desert. Tomorrow her very heart awaits us - Sossusvlei. But that’s tomorrow, and today we sat quietly and thoughtfully under the stars in the world’s oldest desert...
Since the time of the dinosaurs
Why is she the oldest, you ask? Yes, because the rocks that make it up arose hundreds of millions of years ago. About 150 million years ago, the continent Gondwanaland slowly began to break apart into separate parts. The process proceeded slowly, the fragments of the protocontinent moved away from each other, some land areas sank under water, new mountains grew on others - the modern face of the planet was formed.
Less than 70 million years later, at the end of the Cretaceous period, the new continents of South America, Australia, Antarctica and Africa appeared to the world.
Most of them were covered with dense vegetation and teeming with life. In the darkness of the sea waters, well-fed, scaly tylosaurs frolicked, ferocious predators-tyrannosaurs lay in wait for their prey, horned triceratopses chewed melancholy on ferns... And the Namib was already what we see it now - a desert.
Namib Desert on the map
Where the Namib Desert meets the sea
It’s an amazing thing: the land adjacent to the ocean has become not a branch of the Garden of Eden, but one of the most inhospitable places on our planet. The climate here is strange - the air is saturated with water, and in principle there is practically no regular rain. How did this happen?
Antarctica is the main suspect in this case. Not so much the emergence of a new continent, but its subsequent displacement. It pushed back the warm equatorial waters that previously washed the western coast of Africa, replacing them with the cold Benguela Current running to the north. The low temperature of Benguela turned out to be a bad helper in the evaporation of sea moisture and the subsequent formation of clouds from it, which could shed life-giving rain.
From the water abundance of the Atlantic, the Namib Desert received only the fog that envelops it in the morning, generated by the collision of air masses - cold, from the sea, and hot, from the desert. Thanks to its whitish-gray thick shroud, the Namib began to be called the foggy desert. Sometimes a dense, damp haze creeps inland for tens of kilometers and hangs motionless there until the morning, but already blazing with heat, sun, with its rays, burns it out to the last shred. Rain in the Namib Desert is a very rare phenomenon.
Meteorologists remember 2011 well. Then in May, abnormally heavy torrential rains occurred over South Africa and, in particular, over Namibia. These haven't been seen here for at least half a century. Heavy rainfall overwhelmed ephemeral rivers and caused flooding in the eastern and north-central parts of the country. People died, survivors lost their homes, crops disappeared, roads collapsed...
At the same time, rain fell over the hyper-arid Namib Desert. In one day in May, more rain fell here than in the entire normal year - 20 millimeters of water fell from the sky over most of the desert territory. Twenty or thirty millimeters of precipitation is a good downpour for Moscow. But many of our summer rains are like this, but this is the only one like this! - over several years, and maybe over a number of decades.
Deserts are different...
What do we imagine when we say the word “desert”? The scorching sun and the wind driving the sands, right? But there are different deserts: not only sandy, they can also be clayey, loess, rocky, saline and even snowy, as, for example, in Antarctica.
Great deserts of Africa
As for the Namib, it is great. The desert stretches along the edge of the Atlantic Ocean for almost two thousand kilometers. It goes 50–160 km deep into the country, clinging there to the cliffs of the Great Escarpment mountain system, which strictly limit the desert along its entire length to the east. The Namib is very heterogeneous in relief.
In the north and south, its plains are almost devoid of soil; the exposed bedrock is covered with pebbles, crushed stone, small and large stones. In the center there is a very long area, almost 500 km, occupied by an accumulation of sands. The terrain here looks like this: the ocean and, close to it, a vast field of alternating sand hills and depressions, like waves. Nothing more. You can’t help but wonder where so much sand came from here?
Bring the sand, dear
Sand is different from sand. In the children's sandbox he is alone, on the sea beach he is completely different. Let's take a handful of it and carefully examine the contents of the palm: the constituent grains of sand have unequal sizes, different colors, interspersed with pieces of shells, stone chips, and so on.
Sand is small particles that were once rock. Scientists have conducted complex research and found that the local sand is not a product of weathering of local rocks. The grains of Namib sand have come a long way.
Having been born in the central part of the Namibian mountain plateau, they fell with river flows into the Orange River, and from its mouth into the Atlantic Ocean. From there, the current dragged masses of sand along the coast to the north. The sea path of the grains of sand ended when the surf threw them back onto the shore. But the sand does not lie on the shore in a shapeless pile; it forms dunes that move.
How? It's all the work of the wind. It picks up and continuously shifts masses of coastal sand inland, forming dunes. Along the gentle windward side, grains of sand rise to the crest of the dune and fall from it: the leeward slope is always steep. So - continuously. The desert has a different flow of time: the fall of a grain of sand means that the dune has already begun its movement, imperceptible to people.
But in addition to moving dunes in the desert, there are also petrified ones. Over time - after hundreds of thousands of years - the sand in the dune cakes, is pressed, turns into sandstone - the dune turns to stone. Scientists have found that the sand dunes are much younger than the Namib Desert itself. The age of its oldest sands turned out to be approximately one million years.
On the frozen waves of the desert
The wind lifts dry sand into the air, plays with it, and plumes of dust dance over the tops of sandy hills of the most bizarre shape. The heights of the hills vary widely - some are comparable to the height of a ten-story building. But the highest of them is Dune number seven - 383 meters. She is the tallest in the world.
Its funny name is explained very simply - all the dunes have been counted and each has its own number. But some received an additional name to the number. For special merits. For example, Big Daddy. Or the beautiful Elim dune, which is located at the entrance to Sossusvlei. It was named after the Elim family farm that existed near it for a long time.
Along the coast the dunes stretch in parallel rows. Their length can be ten or twenty kilometers. Their strict ordering from north to south is also a consequence of the endless winds that blow one half of the year from the ocean inland, and the second in the opposite direction, from the mainland towards the Atlantic.
But in the sheltered Sossusvlei valley the wind blows in all directions. And the dunes are formed here in a completely different shape - “star” - with several branches from the center. Such dunes are difficult to move.
An interesting thing is that the Bushmen can perfectly navigate the sands, which are frightening in their monotony. In our forests, those in trouble are helped to navigate the terrain by the moss that grows on the trees on the north side, and in the Namib this is done by the dunes occupying a north-south position.
By the way, the compass in the desert is acting up. Sand, if you look closely, is not only a mixture of white, yellow and orange. There is a bit of black in it. Such a barely visible coating that highlights all the bends of the dune. It turned out that this light pollen has magnetic properties.
We have already talked about the fact that sand is not only gray or yellow, but also black, pink, purple, and white. The color of the Namib dunes off the Atlantic coast is light - yellow-white, but the further you move deeper into the desert, the more noticeable in their color is the presence of red tones - traces of oxidized iron. The dunes are literally rusting! And generally speaking, the country’s mineral resources are very rich.
I love the desert - the queen of earthly beauty
We have been lucky enough to visit many beautiful countries, but Namibia and Namib amazed us. If a miracle happened, we would be back there tomorrow. It is probably natural that the name of the country Namibia comes from the name of the Namib Desert.
Nothing like its landscapes can be found anywhere in the world: here are weathered rocks, intricately carved by the wind, and stone wastelands, tiny oases, dry river beds and canyons carved by them. There are huge, highest and amazingly picturesque dunes with gracefully curved ridges. An incredibly colorful palette, absolutely cosmic panoramas... The sizzling hot desert seems to breathe, and its sand sways like shimmering silk... This simply cannot happen! But there is a Namib!
And like a magnet it attracts filmmakers, artists, photographers and romantics from all over the world.
What is flue
Remember when we talked about ephemeral rivers? Geographers use this term to refer to rivers that form occasionally. The surface of the desert is crossed here and there by dried river beds. They do not come to life every year: only when there is a particularly heavy downpour in the mountains east of the Namib during the rainy season.
If such a rare event occurs, then their beds are filled with a full-flowing stormy stream. But the water will not run for very long. According to science, every river is supposed to flow into the sea, but rarely does any of the ephemeral rivers manage to reach the ocean. For the most part, they do not flow anywhere; their beds are lost among the dunes. The parched soil greedily absorbs moisture, leaving clay bald spots covered with a salt crust in place of the stone-hard watercourse.
However, sometimes there is so much water that the soil does not have time to quickly absorb it. Then, in the depressions of the clayey riverbed, there will still be dirty lakes for some time. This is flay. Several months will pass, the water from the fle will evaporate, and under the surface, bursting from the heat, in the depths of the earth, wet rocks will remain for a long time.
Thanks to them, the existence of individually growing camel acacias and thorny nara bushes is possible, which, with their green grapefruit-sized fruits, provide food for many desert animals.
Slowly, slowly, but the sands are advancing, moving upstream and filling up the riverbed. This could take a whole decade. But one day, in a particularly happy year, the water breaks through again, winning back what was taken from the sand, and the float is again filled with turquoise water... And then everything repeats itself.
Never and nowhere else on earth
In the Nama language, the name of the desert means “a place where there is nothing.” Well, of course, what should there be there besides sand? There is no water! But life is unthinkable without water...
Yes, indeed, this is an extremely dry place, but it is by no means lifeless. In a region that has preserved its climatic and natural characteristics unchanged for so long, a unique ecosystem has formed.
Let's start with the flora. Scientists count almost 200 species of endemics growing here, that is, plants that are found only in this area and nowhere else.
Desert plant Welwitschia mirabilis
The plants of the Namib Desert are unique in their unusualness. For example, take Welwitschia, which Europeans learned about less than two hundred years ago. While this plant itself lives for two thousand years. The Bushmen respectfully call him “Otji Tumbo,” which means “big lord.”
The big gentleman prefers solitude and looks very much like a pile of garbage. The root, like that of a beet, tapers and goes 2–3 meters deep. Above the surface of the sand - literally two to three tens of centimeters - its voluminous, meter-diameter trunk rises. Only a couple of brown-green leaves grow from the pedestal-shaped trunk.
These two rough, leathery and rough leaves are never replaced and grow slowly throughout the life of the plant. The wind flutters them, tearing them into strips, confuses them, twists them, the ends of the rags dry out over time... Be that as it may, the length of the remaining ribbons of leaves is decent - five meters.
The shaggy plant is more reminiscent of an octopus than a tree, which scientists claim it is. Well, it certainly has nothing in common with some beautiful spruce or pine, of which Velvichia is a distant relative. Velvichia mirabilis! And indeed the national flower of Namibia, also called the desert rose, is amazing Welwitschia!
Aloe relative
Many Russians have a pot of a thorny aloe plant on their windowsill - our home doctor. Its relative lives in the Namib Desert - the kokerbum or quiver tree, a plant of an absolutely alien species that grows up to 9 meters. And although it is not a tree at all, it can boast of a thick trunk with a round head of branches.
Or Lithops. They are also called living stones. The whole plant has two thick leaves. They hide from the scorching sun in sand and rock crevices. You will see it and not immediately understand that it is not a natural pebble, but a bizarre life form - the camouflage is amazing!
Fauna of the Namib Desert
The amazing flora of the desert is matched by the interesting fauna of the Namib Desert. Do you think that only some rare bugs, spiders, snakes and lizards live there? They live, but the number of endemic animal species does not end with them! Yes, there are curious specimens of insects and amphibians that you won’t find anywhere else...
It would probably be worth talking about the darkling beetle, a beetle living in the Namib Desert, whose natural adaptations have prompted scientists to make new technological discoveries... Yes, I have a painfully strong reaction of rejection towards all these beetles, spiders and snakes. Anyone who wants to can read for themselves about these unattractive desert inhabitants.
The Namib is home to various species of antelope, ostriches, jackals... Large animals have also adapted to life in the desert. For example, long-horned oryxes have acquired the ability to live with a body temperature of 42 degrees. For ordinary mammals, this is a catastrophe - cerebral circulation is irreversibly impaired.
Animal life in the Namib is an eternal search for water and coolness. Many plants and animals have learned to quench their thirst with moisture from fogs, quickly move along a hot surface, and hide from the scorching sun by burying themselves in the sand. But fog alone is not enough for large animals, so they try to live near ephemeral rivers.
How would you like it if I told you that elephants live here? Yes, yes, holy truth, desert elephants exist! No one believed in their existence, stories about them were considered local legends, until two naturalists captured them on film! How do they cope with thirst? It turned out that in the throat of these elephants there is a cavity in which a supply of water is stored, well, approximately like a camel in its humps.
And there is also an animal living in the Namibian desert - macroscelides micus - uh... How would that be in Russian... Well, an elephant mouse, or something. An unusual shrew with a flexible nose resembling a trunk was discovered by scientists completely by accident. Eighteen centimeters - from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail, the weight of an adult is 28 grams. A newborn kitten is even bigger! But the genome of the baby with brown fur, when studied, indicated the relationship of the animal not only with rodents, but also... in fact, with an elephant!
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The Namib Desert is located in southwest Africa, where geographical names are not particularly original. Judge for yourself: the Namib Desert runs through the state of Namibia, originating from the city of Namibe. But this is not why the desert attracts thousands of researchers from all over the world: the Namib is the oldest, driest and coldest desert on Earth.
The Namib Desert is believed to be over 80 million years old, making it the oldest desert on the planet. The desert stretched along the African coast back when dinosaurs ruled the planet!
The desert area is 100 thousand square kilometers, and its length is 1900 kilometers along the Atlantic Ocean. The depth of the desert is at least 50 kilometers, and on average it takes up to 160 kilometers.
In the east, the Namib Desert is bounded by the Kaoko and Khomas plateaus, in the southeast it is connected and continued by the Kalahari Desert, famous for its herds of ungulates and a large number of predators. At the same time, the Kalahari is rich in rivers, flora and fauna.
Unlike the Kalahari, the Namib is not without reason the title of the coldest and driest desert on earth. Translated from the language of local tribes, “Namib” means “a place where there is nothing,” which eloquently and succinctly tells us about the local flora and fauna. Few species of plants and animals can survive in the desert climate.
The Namib Desert was formed for two reasons. The first is that easterly winds, or trade winds, constantly blow over the desert, which do not bring rain to the desert. For this reason, the Namib is the driest desert on earth. The second reason is that the Bengal Current, which washes the shores of the desert, carries cold Antarctic waters to the north. At the same time, the waters of the ocean and the lower layer of the atmosphere are cooled. Dense fogs form, which last up to 27 days a month and can extend up to 50 kilometers deep. For this reason, the Namib is the coldest desert on earth.
The Namib is famous for its sand dunes, which reach 300 meters. No desert in the world can boast such mountains of sand. The closer to the ocean, the lighter the sand of the dunes. Inland, the sand is darker and can even turn fiery red.
The Namib is famous for its sand dunes that reach 300 meters
Only two rivers reach the desert: Kunene and Orange. The remaining rivers remain dry for many years. Only once every 5-7 years they are filled with water and then heavy floods are observed in the desert. This is typical for rainy seasons, when rivers have water to fill their beds. During a flood, the river literally transfers all the sand accumulated in the river beds to the ocean shores in just a few hours. There the wind gets to work and unleashes storms of sand onto the shifting dunes. At the same time, sandy rains often cover people’s homes.
The air temperature in the middle of the summer season does not exceed 17 degrees Celsius, while in winter it is no more than 12. Frosts sometimes occur at night. The amount of precipitation is negligible and amounts to only 2 millimeters per year. But even this amount of water can work a miracle: revive the desert and give rise to grass and other plants. Among the grass you can find darkling beetles that live only here and are adapted to conditions of extremely low humidity. Their only source of water is short morning fogs. Burying themselves in the sand at night, the beetles leave the back of their abdomen outside, thus collecting drops of water from the fog. Water flows down the abdomen into the mouth of the beetle and allows it not to die.
A person's foot ended up in the Namib for two reasons: the greedy pursuit of diamonds and trouble. The treasures that the desert contains have taken many lives of treasure hunters. In addition, ships that came too close to the shores of the desert, hidden by thick fogs, became victims of shipwrecks. Due to the constantly shifting dunes, no nautical chart provided guaranteed protection for seafarers. You can still find wrecks of sunken ships off the coast of the Namib...
There have been cases when ships anchored near the shores of the desert. As a rule, these were forced stops due to breakdowns or a storm blocking the further path. After repairs or waiting out bad weather at sea, it happened that the ship’s way back to the sea was blocked by a suddenly moving mountain of sand. The sailors had to abandon ships and go deep into the desert in the hope of salvation. But few managed to survive in the harsh desert conditions.
Nowadays, researchers continue to find mysterious treasures and skeletons of people who died in the fight against nature in the most formidable desert on earth. Namib Desert.
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Even during the life of dinosaurs, the Namib Desert was formed; its age is about 80 million years. It is considered the oldest desert in the world. This coastal area, washed by the Atlantic Ocean, covers an area of 100 thousand square meters. The desert is located in the southwest and extends across almost the entire territory.
Desert climate
The name of the desert translates as “nothing alive.” Harsh climatic conditions force both people, vegetation and wildlife to adapt to them. In the ocean near the desert, the Bengal Current flows, which washes the sands, hot in the sun. This phenomenon contributes to the harsh climate in the desert. Strong winds create huge sand dunes, the highest of which rise to 383 meters.
In coastal areas, the air temperature does not rise above 19 degrees. Whereas in the depths of the desert the air heats up to 38 degrees, and the sand heats up to 60 degrees in the sun. At the same time, at night the temperature drops to 0. Morning fogs envelop Namiba 40 km inland from the coast.
Flora and fauna
Endemic species of plants and animals grow here, which have been able to adapt to such a climate and are impossible to find in other places in the world: darkling beetles; tumboa is a plant with two huge leaves that are periodically worn away by the wind; it lives for more than 1000 years; Nara - the fruits of this plant are the main food and source of moisture for desert animals. The tumboa plant is considered the symbol of Namibia and is featured on the country's coat of arms. An interesting succulent that can be found in the Namib is the Kockerbom. This tree reaches a height of 7 meters.
The dunes are home to several species of antelope, ostriches and even zebra. Rhinoceroses, elephants, hyenas and lions live in river valleys. The desert is home to a huge number of snakes and spiders. A very wide variety of scorpion species have also adapted to the desert climate.
On the ocean coast, despite the difficult climate, seals, birds and even penguins live. After rare rains, some desert areas are covered with a green carpet of vegetation. This phenomenon does not last very long.
Attractions
- Swakopmund is a city surrounded by desert, located on the ocean coast. It has developed a unique climate that is associated with salty sea air and the dry desert climate. The air temperature here does not rise above 25 degrees. Frequent and abundant fogs bring long-awaited moisture to the city. There is little precipitation in the form of rain in this area - no more than 20 mm. The combination of a green oasis in the city and sand dunes beyond attracts tourists. Local cuisine is very popular. It is based on dishes made from exotic animals and plant fruits. Modern buildings with beautiful architecture coexist with slum areas. The clean paved streets in the city and the deep sandy embankments just outside the city delight all vacationers.
- Ghost town Kolmanskop is a mysterious place in the Namib. This city appeared thanks to the discovery of a worker in 1908 - it was a small diamond. After this incident, entire families flocked to this area in the hope of finding diamond deposits. This is how the whole city of Kolmanskop appeared. Solid, beautiful houses were built here in the hope that the diamond deposits here were endless and life in this city would last for centuries. The buildings were made in the German style with inherent neatness and style. Even the window shutters are painted here, following the trends of the time. More than 1000 people lived in the city. A school, a hospital, and even a lemonade production workshop were built here. Over time, the deposits were depleted, and the inhabitants of the city gradually left this city. All buildings are covered with sand and stand waiting for their owners.
- The Skeleton Coast in the desert national park is one of the most mystical places in the world. A large number of fragments of shipwrecks from different periods of life have been collected here. Skulls of ancient animals are scattered throughout the park and fragments of sunken ships are buried in sand mounds. The park is also home to the Roaring Dunes, which have the ability to produce a roar similar to a running airplane engine. The unusual “living sand” in this park resists any human action. Even the powerful wheels of the most modern jeep cannot cope with its power.
- Didley Valley is considered a dead zone in the desert. At the bottom of the valley, in the salt layers, there are petrified trees. Photos of this area resemble a dead zone from movies about the end of the world. Being in this place becomes creepy, and tourists feel like characters from science fiction films, which are often filmed in this area.