News

The discovery of over 500 million year old small fossils in southern Namibia, are today supporting scientific research of living organisms that dwelled on mega-continents like Gondwana, Pangea and Rodinia. Namibia’s southern mountain ranges near Aus provide fascinating fossil finds – witness to dramatic happenings like the Cambrian Fauna Explosion eons ago. Renowned international scientists are currently researching these fossils. Would you like to know more? Read on.

Something large and ungainly was lying just above the high-water mark on a beach in Skeleton National Park. Some vehicles had driven past, probably because the brown lump looked like one of the many tree trunks that get deposited on the beaches. But then the ‘trunk’ turned out to be a young bull southern elephant seal. The bulky marine mammal seemed unperturbed by the people around him.

The year started with various groups of Gondwana Employees making their way to the Kalahari Farmhouse for the 2018 Gondwana Training Academy. The Lodge Group invites promising employees from all over the country. A total of 220 of Gondwana’s 850 employees will participate in the Academy this year.

Visitors to the coast sometimes find penguins on the beach that seem to be sick and try to put them back into the water. When the little fellows look scruffy and unhappy they are not sick but in moult. A number of these flightless birds are sometimes brought to Swakopmund or Walvis Bay where they eventually make it to Dr Sandra Dantu and in Lüderitz to the rehabilitation centre of the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources.

Remarkable sound effects were emanating from the grounds of the Gondwana Travel Centre in Windhoek on Friday, 19 January. The noise of hammering and sawing mingled with peals of laughter as some 70 staffers deserted their desks and rolled up their sleeves for some manual work. It was an afternoon of teambuilding, the highlight of the entertaining exercise was a group project to construct small, portable vegetable gardens. All the effort was for a good cause: the little vegetable gardens were handed to the Mammadù Trust.

Aus is situated 125 km east of Lüderitz on the fringe of the Huib Plateau in the Namib Desert. If you make time for a closer look at this little village of 1,200 inhabitants (in 2011) you will discover a memorial stone at the riverbank next to the old railway station from German colonial times. The stone is a good two metres high, but there is no commemorative plaque... In whose honour was this monument erected? 

Leave it or go for it? When it comes to planning a trip and deciding on accommodation, TripAdvisor, the world's largest travel site is a popular source of information. Four of our lodges received the TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence for the excellent reviews posted in 2017: Kalahari Farmhouse, The Delight Swakopmund, Namib Dune Star Camp and Eagle's Nest Chalets of our marketing partner Klein-Aus Vista.