Fish River Canyon
Interesting facts
- In 2012 the trail runner Ryan Sandes covered the canyon's roughly 90-kilometre hiking route in under seven hours, a walk that normally takes five days.
- The first documented run through the canyon came in 1990, when a group of hikers in running gear finished the route in 11 hours 42 minutes.
- Since 2011 an annual ultramarathon has run along the canyon floor, letting runners choose their own shortcuts between fixed checkpoints.
- On the canyon floor lies the grave of German lieutenant Thilo von Trotha, killed there in 1905 during a clash with the Nama.
- The canyon's story began about 650 million years ago, when plate movements opened a north–south trough for the ancient river to follow.
- Glaciers of the Karoo Ice Age, around 300 million years ago, scoured and deepened the early canyon.
- In summer, temperatures on the canyon floor can reach 48 °C by day and stay near 30 °C at night.
- Hikers ford the river more than 20 times along the route, and midway lies a warm spring known as Sulphur or Palm Springs.
- It is the second most visited tourist attraction in Namibia; only part of the canyon lies in the national park, while the rest is privately owned.
Why it is worth it
The Fish River Canyon is the largest canyon in Africa: a winding gorge in the dry south of Namibia, about 160 kilometres long, up to 27 kilometres wide and in places some 550 metres deep. Seen from the rim it is a landscape stripped to its bones — no forest, hardly any soil, just layered rock walls in browns and ochres, a broad upper terrace, and deep inside it a second, narrower canyon where the river loops back on itself in tight meanders. It is a place to watch the light move across the rock as the shadows fill the bends.
The canyon took shape over hundreds of millions of years. A rift formed along a north–south fault long before the dinosaurs, glaciers later deepened it, and when Africa and South America drifted apart the river gained steepness and cut down into the hard gneiss beneath. That history is written in the two levels of the gorge: an upper canyon where erosion stalled on resistant rock, and a lower canyon carved once the river finally broke through. The Fish River itself is Namibia's longest interior river, but it runs for only part of the year — it floods in late summer, and for the rest of the year shrinks to a chain of long, still pools among boulders.
The canyon lies within the ǀAi-ǀAis/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park, shared with South Africa, and was declared a national monument in 1962. The main viewpoints are near Hobas, at the northern end; about 70 kilometres downstream, the hot springs of ǀAi-ǀAis mark its lower end. Between the two runs one of southern Africa's great hikes, around 90 kilometres along the canyon floor, normally walked in about five days and permitted only in the cooler months between May and mid-September.
Getting there
The nearest town is Keetmanshoop, about 138 km from the canyon by straight line; the nearest airport, Oranjemund (OMD), is a small field about 147 km away, so most visitors fly into Windhoek's Hosea Kutako International Airport (WDH) and drive some 530 km south. From Keetmanshoop take the B4 towards Lüderitz, then the gravel C12 south and the C37 to Hobas, where park entry is paid; the main viewpoint is about 12 km further. A high-clearance vehicle is advisable on the gravel roads.
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From the encyclopaedia
The Fish River Canyon is located in the south of Namibia. It is the largest canyon in Africa, and the second most visited tourist attraction in Namibia. It features a gigantic ravine, in total about 160 kilometres (100 mi) long, up to 27 km wide and in places almost 550 meters deep.
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