We are up early and have breakfast at 6:00 AM. After breakfast, we go take a look at the mother cheetah and her two cubs. They come to the fence and we spend some time looking at them. But after a while, the mother called to the cubs and they ran off into the bush.
After packing up the campsite, we headed off. It was a relatively short drive to Twyfelfontien, or rather the campsite near there. We arrived shortly after 11 AM and set up camp. After lunch we relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. It was hot and we all looked for whatever shade we could find - and there was not too much shade.
At 3 PM we drove to Twyfelfontein, only a short distance away. It is still very hot and it feels like we are in an oven. The rocks are radiating the heat and reflecting the bright sun light - blinding us. The name Twyfelfontein means doubtful spring - and the spring that we saw seems very doubtful and I would not want to rely on it for water - only about one cubic meter of water per day. The area, however, is famous for its large gallery of rock art - one of the most extensive in Africa. It is situated in a horse shoe shaped set of hills, which slope up wards, with the sides covered with boulders of all sizes - some small and some huge.
The rock engravings, petroglyphs, are over 6,000 years old and were made by cutting through the hard patina covering the sandstone. They date back to the Early Stone Age and are most likely work of the local San hunters. There are over 2,500 engravings here, but we had the chance to see only a few of them.
They include carvings of animals no longer found here, such as elephant, giraffe, rhino and lion, along with one sea lion, even though the coast is over 100 km away. We took about 1½ hours to tour the site and then headed back to the truck and the campsite.
We took it easy back at the campsite and enjoyed a very nice shower. It was a huge area under a big tree, with the water pipes coming through the trunk of the tree. Great shower. After dinner we sat around the fire - it gets cold around here after the sun sets. We had a wonderful view of the mountains as they turned red in the last glowing rays of the sun. We went to bed early to watch the night sky from our sleeping bags.