Things to do
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Burnt Mountain
Heat from an intrusion baked the shale of this ridge into blackened hornfels, leaving a slope that carries almost no plants and changes colour through the day. Sunrise and the last light are when the reds and purples separate. A viewing point sits beside the road and the walking is limited.
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Damara Living Museum
A community run open air museum presents Damara tool making, fire lighting, music and plant medicine, staffed from the surrounding settlements, with the fees going straight to them. The format is a demonstration rather than a village, and it says so. It sits a few kilometres from the engravings.
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Landmark
Doros Crater
An igneous complex sits on the plains northwest of the valley, reached on a rough track that needs a high clearance vehicle and some navigation. Desert elephants pass through the area. There are no facilities of any kind out there, so the trip is planned around carrying water and fuel.
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Mowani Mountain Camp
Thatched domes are set among granite boulders on a ridge above the Aba-Huab, arranged so that the rock hides most of the camp from itself. A sundowner point looks west over the valley. Drives run to the engravings and out along the riverbed after the elephants.
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Organ Pipes
Dolerite forced into a crack in the sandstone cooled into tight vertical columns, and erosion has since opened a small gorge that exposes them along its walls. The whole thing is a short walk down from a parking area. It reads better in person than in photographs because the scale is modest.
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Twyfelfontein Rock Engravings
Hunter gatherers cut animals, spoor and geometric figures into the slabs above a spring over a period running to several thousand years, and a giraffe and a lion with a kinked tail are the images most often pointed out. Two marked routes climb the slope. Guides are compulsory and the rock is hot by mid morning.