But before we carry on, allow me to apologize for the long delay; I'm sure that many of you have enjoyed reading my posts and viewing my photos (I hope I don't sound narcissistic) as much as I enjoyed writing and capturing them.
I would also like to wish you all a (late) very merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
Right, on to business; I have returned home to Namibia, a country formerly occupied by South Africa, eager to get my trigger happy hands on my camera and go snapshot crazy with the beauty that literally seems to surround me.
This may look somewhat odd, but I took this picture on the road back from the airport just after I had landed. I know that it is not natural, but I thought it was quite an interesting subject to capture.
As you might have gathered, this is a picture depicting parts of a train that had de-railed only a few hours before I landed. I went to the site about a week ago and the wreck is still there, it has just been moved off of the tracks.
When it comes to the natural beauty of Namibia, I feel that you have to look a lot closer to really appreciate its full beauty; take this for example:
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Palmato Gecko. It has a transparent body and lives in the Namib Desert. It's diet consists of small insects such as this:
The Namib Desert Beetle. Interesting fact, this beetle collects moisture from fog in the mornings by standing on top of high structures such as rocks or dunes and pointing its rear at the fog. The fog then condenses on its body and runs down to its mouth. Refreshing, yes?
But back to this little guy:
The Palmato Gecko lives inside burrows to escape the blistering heat of the day and prefers to come out during dawn or dusk. An interesting fact about this cute critter is that it can't blink (try winning that staring contest Chuck). It keeps its eyes moist by...wait for it...licking them. That's right, it licks its eyes.
The Namib Desert is said to be the oldest desert in the world; it's also pretty vast. The name "Namib" (which is a Nama word) actually means "vast" (when loosely translated).
The desert stretches on for over 2000 Kilometers which is why it can sometimes be hard to find all of the treasures that it is hiding:
But if you look in the right places:
To clarify, those bones are human. I don't know who the person is nor how they got there, but it made for a rather interesting pic.
As I said earlier, I feel that you have to look closer to appreciate Namibia's beauty:
But I also feel that sometimes, you have to take a step back to understand the sheer size of this desert; to be able to appreciate its grandeur:
A little info on the above shots. The first was taken near Sandwich Harbor and the other two were taken at a place called Mirabib. To be able to get the shots of the landscape, I had to hike up a small mountain to be able to get a proper perspective on just how vast this desert really is.
And then I ran into these:
These two are known as Rüppell's Bustard's (not bastards), a species of Bustard that are near endemic to Namibia.
I couldn't get very close to them (even when I tried to crawl towards them) so I had to zoom in as much as I could and then digitally zoom and crop the photo in order to get this shot. Very cute birds.
And I'm afraid that's about it for this blog post ladies and gentlemen, I hope that it is satisfactory as I really tried my best to make up for my absence these past couple of weeks (maybe months?). I will try to update my blog again as soon as possible.
If you would like to ask me anything or just wanna give me a shout out, please leave a comment. =)
As a parting gift, please enjoy these other photos that I have taken in my time back at home:
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