FISH RIVER CANYON & QUIVER TREE FOREST
Africa's great gorge - the Fish River Canyon in Namibia! Second only to the Blue Nile
Gorge in Ethiopia on the continent, and largest in the southern hemisphere.
The Fish River canyon and the Quiver tree forest are placed on one page as
these are not areas, but specific places of interest. They are in a relatively
close proximity to one another, within the same geographic region.
Photographs of the canyon are restricted to a single photograph, simply to afford an aerial view.
No photograph from the air, or from the rim of the canyon, could ever do this canyon justice.
Although only approximately 550 metres (1787.5 ft) deep at its deepest point - compared to
the depth of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, which reaches 1600 metres (5200 ft), there are
several other contributing factors & considerations which would place the Fish River canyon
of Namibia in a category of its own.
Regardless of the great maximum depth achieved by the Grand Canyon, the oldest - exposed -
rock strata is dated at no older than 2000 million years. The Fish River canyon, by contrast,
exposes rock strata estimated in excess of 2600 million years old. The walls and buttresses of
the Fish River canyon in Namibia can be viewed as - in the words of Michael Brittan - a
veritable layer cake of the ages.
Not too distant from the canyon, another strange phenomena can be viewed - a natural garden
of Nature, approaching the status of being a forest - the Quiver tree forest. Not really a tree,
but a large species of aloe (Aloe dichotoma), which received its nickname - quiver tree -
from the fact that earlier Bushman in Namibia, discovered how handy the hollow stem of the
plant can be when used as a "quiver" to carry their poisoned arrows.
The photographs on this page therefore only represent a glimpse of each of these phenomena,
but are specifically relevant to those safaris in the Seven Wonders of Namibia collection, that
have the Fish River Canyon & Quiver tree forest included in their itineraries.
Click on the thumbnails to view a slightly larger picture.
(You may return here by clicking on the 
button in the right-hand, top corner of the photo page).
The Fish River canyon Possible bird life The Quiver tree forest
sighting - Bateleur
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