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“Congratulations!! You scored 5 Eco flowers (92%)!!” Gondwana’s environmental officer, Quintin Hartung, who accompanied the Eco Awards Namibia inspectors to Kalahari Anib Lodge in late November 2017, rejoiced with the lodge management and staff at the fantastic score. 

The lighthouse stands out on Swakopmund's "skyline". The citizens of the coastal town are proud of it and it features prominently in the old and new municipal coat of arms. Nevertheless it is rarely mentioned by sources on the history of Swakopmund. Is that perhaps because it was part of a project that failed? 

Last week, we launched our #itsup2us campaign at the Delight Hotel in Swakopmund. The Gondwana Collection Namibia has adopted a “Zero waste to Landfill” goal together with our partner in this venture – Rent-a-Drum (RaD) who originally adopted this initiative. 

They often appear in huge flocks and descend on waterholes like a cloud. In their thousands they invade fields and destroy harvests – from Senegal across to Ethiopia and down to southern Africa, where vast swarms are on the move in search of food and for nesting. They are the largest population of a single bird species on the planet. Experts estimate their numbers at 1500 billion birds after a breeding season. We are talking about the red-billed quelea. 

On 2 February, the Gondwana Collection welcomed Three Wheels Co, a group of travel bloggers attempting to create a world record! The three gentlemen hail from all over the world. Travis Bluemling is the US, Chris Parkes is British-South African, and Ross OC Jennings is the Scotsman who aims to play the bagpipes in every country across the globe.

At the southern end of the Fish River Canyon, a mineral-rich hot spring encircled by rugged mountains has attracted people for centuries. It was known from the earliest times by the Nama who went there when sick to be healed by the rejuvenating waters. /Ai-/Ais is the Nama word for ‘very hot’. Groundwater heated up in the Earth’s crust rises to the surface at about 60˚C in passages created by the deep fault systems found in the canyon.

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.