Desert dreaming in the Fish River Canyon

Posted on 5 October 2009

The Fish River Canyon is one of the world’s great canyons. It was formed over a period stretching from 50 to 35 million years ago.

It is also ancient compared with say America’s Grand Canyon which is a baby less than 5 million years old. In this the Fish stands as a stark reminder of geological processes from the basement of time.

I won’t bore you with the details; suffice to say that this ancient landscape has remained practically unchanged for many hundreds of thousands of years thanks in part to the aridity of this region.

Of course the canyon is best known for its Fish River Hike – a five day trail that traverses the length of the canyon floor ending at the hot springs of Ais Ais. These I must add have been recently renovated and revamped and are in splendid condition. If you are planning on a trip to southern Namibia then I can highly recommend stopping off here.

From Ais Ais we have headed south across the Orange River using the pont at Sendlingsdrift and are now based here filming in the Richtersveld National Park for the week. The Landscape here is magical – hot and dry – and amazingly colourful and these barren mountains have a multitude of tones of red and brown and green. Scattered across this is a smattering of arid adapted plants that seem to eke out an existence from the narrowest margins.






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