Cave Art or Doodles?

We managed to get another spare wheel organised for The Tank, as we now knew what sort of surface we would be driving on for the rest of the trip and I wasn't comfortable with just one spare and very little rubber on the other 4 wheels. We collected it on the way out of Swakopmund, and it proved timely, as on the trip to our next destination, another 350km drive on gravel roads, we got a puncture. It wasn't a dramatic, explosive blow-out, but a definite pop after going over a couple of larger bumps, and the noisy hissing sound coming from one of the tyres did rather give away the problem. Changing the wheel for one of our (well-treaded) spares was simple enough, though doing it in the middle of a desert plain in the mid-afternoon heat was a little, well, hot. I was glad we had another spare as we still had 150km to go. Namibia seems like a very clean country, though part of that could be explained by the lack of people and traffic, and there was very little mess at the sides of the roads. However, the number of discarded, shredded tyres left like rubber corpses was significant!

Our next stop was Damaraland, which is more of a convenient stop over between Swakopmund and the wildlife park at Etosha. Another really nice lodge, with another long and bumpy driveway, gorgeous views from our room and bed and a lizard that lived under the raised, wooden platform in our shower.
One of our priorities was getting the puncture in our tyre fixed. Should be simple enough, we thought. A few phone calls later and we had the 'address' of a 'local' place that would replace it - they even had a suitable spare tyre in. Excellent. Not only that, but the 'garage' was located in a 'town' which had the primary attraction in the area - some cave art - which we were planning to go to anyway, if we had time, and this way we could kill two birds with one stone. My excessive use of quotes in this paragraph may hint that it wasn't as easy as we thought it would be.

Next morning we set off reasonably early to this 'town'. It was about 45 minutes away. Well signposted though, so no problem heading for it. Twyfelfontein is not a town. We followed the signs and the road ended in a large parking area, which was obviously for the cave art place. No sign of a garage. Or houses. Or people, other than the garage attendants. Fair enough, we'd visit the cave art first, and sort the tyre out later.

The cave art at Twyfelfontein is described as amazing, interesting and even out of this world, by various reviews I have seen. I thought it was OK. Just OK. You have to pay for a guide - you cannot visit them by yourself, which is fair enough - it keeps the local economy going, and ensures people don't deface the site. The site is about a 15 minute walk over some rough ground from the visitors centre (which is actually pretty good, and eco-friendly, though people do complain about the drop-hole toilets which were pretty clean when we visited, but then we are used to a lot worse on previous holidays!) in the heat - I was glad we didn't leave it until later in the day to visit.


Our guide was pretty good, and gave some background to the site - when it was discovered, how extensive the art is, who did them etc. Basically there are a number of pictures of animals etched into the rock at various places. Some are fairly good pictures, some I could have drawn better myself, which is quite damming of their quality. Most are recognisable, though some could only be made out when we were told what they were supposed to be.

The art is supposed to be from 2,000 - 6,000 years old, which is pretty vague. I was also thinking that 2,000 years ago people were writing books, building cities, casting bronze and discussing philosophy, so etching a few drawings on a stone is not particularly impressive. 6,000 years ago is a bit more impressive as to the longevity of the pictures, but we're not exactly talking cave men here, though, to be fair, Stonehenge is only 5,000 years old. So it was interesting, but I'm glad we didn't travel hours out of our way to visit the site.

We were also told that a couple of very roughly drawn shapes, scratched over a rock containing pictures of giraffes and rhinos etc, were actually pictures of a seal and a penguin. Really. Apparently the justification was that these were done by nomads and had obviously visited the coastal areas at some point. Ok. If you say so. Alternatively, my thinking was they are just rough shapes drawn by a non artist at the time, or even at any point since. But I'm a cynic. If they want to think there is a single, bad, picture of a seal, and a single, bad, picture of a penguin amongst the zebra and oryz then that's fine with me. It gives the guide something else to talk about.

My cynical radar was similarly beeping when the guide said that the stone containing a number of small etched circles, with holes in the middle of them was actually a map of the waterholes in the area, and the depth of the hole reflected the depth of the waterhole. Fantastic - an ancient map, sounds really interesting. But. They have no idea where the map is of, and it bears no relation to known waterholes in the area.
Still, an interesting way to spend the morning, and always good to see things that have survived the ravages of time.

We asked about the 'garage' and eventually got some directions, along the lines of "turn left at the big mound of rocks, follow the road until you are able to turn right, cross two riverbeds and you'll see a sign saying 'workshop'". I was not confident we'd find it.

But find it we did. Turns out it isn't a 'garage' any more than this was a 'town' but it was actually a small number of houses and a workshop that was owned by, and serviced, the large upmarket tourist lodge nearby. Joshua, the main man there was very nice and indeed he had a suitable tyre, and the means to fit it. Great. Unfortunately he couldn't fit it for free until he had authorisation. The authorisation needed to come from our hire car company, to a tyre company in Windhoek, to the general manager of the local lodge and finally to him. Even Joshua admitted that this was a bit bureaucratically mad. But it did eventually happen. It just took 90 minutes of making phone calls, waiting for phone calls, standing in the sun, looking at the birds and insects and chatting about life in general. Still, it did get sorted eventually and without any further problems we headed back to our lodge for a restful afternoon of reading, drinking Amarula and looking out at the (unfortunately wildlife-free) views before another nice dinner at the lodge.

Off again in the morning on another drive northwards, complete with 2 decent spare tyres again!

View from our room

Place Stayed: Doro !Nawas, Damaraland

Places Visited: Twyfelfontein