Day 19 - Erongo Plateau Camp

General

The nineteenth day was the last full day of the journey, and it was spent at a camp on the plateau of the Erongo Mountains. The road from the north climbs into the range, the granite and the bush of the hills close around it, and the camp stands high on the shoulder of the mountain with the whole of the country below: the plains of the interior to the east, the line of the dunes and the coast to the west, and the rock of the Erongo around it. The day had no itinerary, and after three weeks of driving that was the point of it.

The plateau is the place to see the country as a whole. The air is clear, the view from the camp runs for a hundred kilometres in every direction, the sun sets behind the mountains of the west and rises over the plains of the east, and the birds and the small animals of the granite hills are around the camp all day. The visitor who has crossed the deserts and the parks of the country in the weeks before will find the view from the plateau the summary of all of it: the geography of Namibia in a single sweep of the eye.

The camp itself is a farm of the old kind with the modern business of the tourism added to it. The buildings are of stone and thatch, the water comes from the boreholes and the tanks, the power from the sun, and the kitchen from the garden and the farms of the region, and the whole of it is run by the family that owns the land. The rooms and the pitches are set among the rocks, the pool faces the plain, and the tracks of the farm lead to the viewpoints and the rock art of the mountain.

The evening was the last of the journey and the one that the traveller remembers. The sun went down behind the mountains of the west in the colours that the country produces at that hour, the plain below turned from gold to grey, the fire was lit on the terrace, and the stars came out over the plateau in the way that the deserts and the mountains of Namibia have produced for the whole of the three weeks. The packing was done, the last dinner was eaten, and the country that had been crossed from end to end was below the wall of the camp.

History

The Erongo Mountains are the landmark that gives the region its name and one of the most striking features of the centre of the country. They are the remains of a volcanic complex of the Cretaceous period, they stand above the plains of the interior in a ring of granite and lava, and the name Erongo belongs to the mountain and to the region that the administration of the modern state has built around it. The capital of the region is on the coast at Swakopmund, the towns of the interior are Karibib, Usakos, Omaruru and Arandis, and the uranium mine that the country is known for lies at the edge of the same range.

The tourist route that ends on the plateau is the product of the last thirty years. The farms of the Erongo, like those of the rest of the country, were ranches of the colonial period that were turned into guest accommodation when the cattle stopped paying, and the rock art, the landscape and the position of the mountain made the region one of the established stops of the self drive circuit. The visitor who ends a journey there is following the same route as thousands of others, and the camps that have been built for them are the industry that keeps the farms alive.

The rock art of the Erongo is part of the same heritage as the engravings of the north west. The shelters and the boulders of the range carry the paintings and the engravings of the hunter gatherers of the region, the sites are protected and are visited with the guides of the farms and the communities, and they are one more chapter of the long human history of a country that the visitor has seen in the graves, the ruins and the engravings of the whole route. The plateau of the Erongo is the place where the journey’s history ends and its geography begins.

The end of the journey is also the story of the country’s independence. The visitor who has driven from the capital to the south, the desert, the coast and the north west has crossed the land of the Nama, the Damara, the Herero and the Haiǁom, the farms of the colonial period and the conservancies of the independent state, and the parks that the tourists of the world come to see. The Namibia of the last day of the route is the product of all of those histories, and the camp on the plateau is a comfortable place from which to look back at them.

Geology

The Erongo Mountains are a volcanic ruin, and the geology of them is the geology of the plateau. The complex was built by eruptions in the Cretaceous period, the magma of those eruptions cooled into the granite of the ring and into the lava of the surrounding rocks, and the whole was then eroded for tens of millions of years until the hard core of the volcano was left standing above the plain. The plateau of the camp is part of that core, the rounded boulders of the slopes are its granite, and the view from the top is over the country that the erosion removed.

The ring structure of the range is one of the classic features of the region. The granite of the intrusion and the darker rocks of the volcanic pile stand in a circle of hills around the centre of the old complex, the streams of the mountain run out of the ring in every direction, and the plains beyond are covered with the material that the mountain has shed. The geology is studied, the mineral wealth of the area, the tin of the old mines and the rare minerals of the granite, was the reason the first settlements of the range were founded, and the visitor who drives a few kilometres on the farm tracks will see the whole of the structure in the walls and the boulders.

The granite itself is the material of the plateau and the reason for its look. The rock cooled slowly below the surface, the crystals in it grew large, and the weathering of it in a country without frost produces the rounded forms and the great single boulders that the camps and the viewpoints of the region are built among. The same rock, broken into the sand of the plains, is the ground of the fields of the interior, and the whole of the centre of the country is built on the products of the mountain.

The water and the climate of the plateau are the explanation of the farm. The mountains are high enough to catch the rain of the summer, the granite holds it and releases it at the springs of the slopes, and the farms of the range, which are among the few in the interior with a reliable supply, were established at those springs. The camp of the last night drinks from the same source, and the garden, the trees and the animals of the place are the visible result of the difference that a few hundred metres of altitude and a granite mountain make in the middle of a desert.

Things to See

The viewpoints of the plateau are the sight of the last day. The tracks of the farm lead to the edges of the mountain where the whole of the country is visible, the drive or the walk takes an hour or two, and the guides of the camp will point out the landmarks of the view: the plains of the interior, the line of the coast, the dunes on the horizon and the mountains of the north west. The sunrise and the sunset from the top of the plateau are the two hours that the place is for.

The rock art of the Erongo is the historical excursion of the day. The shelters of the range carry the paintings and the engravings of the people who lived in the mountains before the farms, the sites are visited with a guide from the camp or the community, and the figures of the animals and the people of the shelters are the same as those of the sites of the whole route. The walk to the art is part of the experience: the granite, the bush and the views are as good as the paintings.

The birds and the animals of the mountain are the everyday company of the camp. The rock hyraxes of the boulders, the small antelopes of the slopes, the baboons that raid the gardens, the eagles and the hawks that nest in the cliffs and the small birds of the bush are all around the farm, and the water points of the camp bring them every morning and evening. The visitor who sits on the terrace of the camp for a whole afternoon will see more species than they can name without a book.

The camp of the last night is the place to rest and to write. The rooms and the pitches are set in the granite, the pool and the terrace face the plain, the meals are made from the produce of the farm, and the quiet of the mountain is the contrast to the three weeks of driving that the journey has been. The visitor who has kept a diary and a list of the animals will finish both of them here, and the conversation of the last dinner is the recollection of everything that the country has given.

The practical advice for the last day is the advice for the return. The road from the plateau to the capital or to the coast is gravel and then tar, the drive takes a morning, and the fuel and the water should be taken at the last town of the mountain before the descent. The vehicle should be checked at the camp, the dust of three weeks washed off and the tyres and the filters looked at, and the traveller who leaves the keys of a camper van at the airport of Windhoek after three weeks will have completed one of the great self drive routes of Africa. The railway of the coast and the roads of the interior connect the country, the camps of the route are ready for the visitor, and the Namib, the canyons, the rock art and the parks of Etosha are all within a day of the capital.

References

1. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Erongo Region. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erongo%20Region
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3. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Uis. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uis
4. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Damaraland. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damaraland
5. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Khorixas. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khorixas
6. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Namibia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namibia
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11. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Windhoek. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windhoek
12. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Twyfelfontein. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twyfelfontein
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14. Pontow R., Jung S., Hauff F., Berndt J. (2021) Melting of metasomatically enriched lithospheric mantle, Constraints from Pan-African monzonites (Damara Orogen, Namibia). Lithos. 398-399. 106332. doi.org/10.1016/j.lithos.2021.106332
15. Lancaster N. (2026) Dune Sediments. The Namib Sand Sea. 47-80. doi.org/10.1201/9781003763185-4