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GeneralHas anyone ever explored/hiked/rockhounded the Erongo Mountains in Namibia?

4th Mar 2010 09:21 UTCRyan Lay

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone has ever rock hounded or explored the Erongo Mountains. I am looking for first hand reference to someone being there and not looking for literature. I would just love to hear your stories about this magical mountain.

6th Mar 2010 00:47 UTCDonovan Wood

hi mike

the closest i have been to erongo is brandberg or the erongo dealers stalls on the side of the road. as far as I know the miners on erongo mountain dont often allow access to the public. You can try getting in touch with a Bruce cairn cross he Published a book on Southern Africa minerals and as far as i know has spent a fair amount of time in the erongos. You can all so try getting hold of Douw and Este steyn on the Fosagams website. http://www.fosagams.co.za/ As they have all so spent a lot of time in Namibia and are in contact with a lot of rockhounds in southern africa..

6th Mar 2010 02:32 UTCDebbie Woolf Manager

Yes I have been to the Erongo back in 2001, its not only this area that is magical the whole Country is ! Much of the Erongo is private land/farms but we did come across a few local miners with there kango drills looking for Beryl but had not found anything that day.

One day mid morning we was driving along the dirt track & came across another car & occupants they had run out of petrol, it is a law in Namibia to stop & assist a broken down vehicle & sensible to have extra jerry cans full of petrol which we did, my husband went to put the petrol in the tank but was stopped & told to put the petrol into a round washing-up bowl that stood in the air filter housing !??! Had a piece of plastic that the bonnet push down to stop it slurping everywhere !! The petrol tank had been scrapped ! It was so funny to see that & obviously very dangerous but in Africa anything goes !

One of the occupants a young child say 8 yrs came up to me & asked for money, he wanted to buy bread so I gave him some & he shoved into my hand a brown bag, he was gone by the time I got to looked inside & I was amazed to find it contained about 30 small Aquamarines.

At Tubussis village as soon as you arrive the locals appear from nowhere on foot or donkey & cart with their offerings, they open the store building & offer you minerals, word gets around quickly buyers are in town, Filemon Awaseb was the only person to arrive at the village in a car (bmw), he was desperate to buy petrol & offered this specimen http://www.mindat.org/photo-104964.html but his first price was way out of our range, my husband spent a good hour haggling !

:)

7th Mar 2010 01:49 UTCMalcolm Southwood 🌟 Expert

Debbie,

Your story with the petrol reminded me of an experience Angela and I had the first time we toured in Nambia in 1984. A friend had told us that the locals were keen to trade minerals for sugar or tobacco, so we stocked up accordingy in Usakos before driving out towards Klein Spitzkopje.

The first couple of guys on the roadside who waved at us had some bags with small topaz crystals in, and though they weren't great specimens we started offering our goods as trade. But these blokes kept shaking their heads at the sugar and tobacco, and pointing instead at the fuel cap on the car. Then one of them pulled out a long piece of plastic tubing and a glass bottle, so it was clear they wanted us to siphon out some fuel. We couldn't imagine what they would want petrol for, but one of them grabbed my hand and took me off behind some rocks where he showed me a handcart with a compressor and a jack-hammer. With my poor Afrikaans and their limited English we eventually worled out that they had been workers from the Rubikon mine (closed now, but used to work lithium-rich pegmatites). They had been fired, but had managed to "borrow" this equipment to set up their own little operation recovering topaz crystals. So in the end we gave them a couple of litres of petrol in exchange for a handful of small and scruffy topaz crystals.

Mike, apologies that this is a little divergent to your original question, but hope it gives you a different sort of feel for the place anyway. By the way, have a look at Bruce Cairncross and Uli Bahmann's 2006 Min Rec article (v.37 No. 5) on the Erongo Mountains. They spent some time in the specimen producing areas and they describe the countryside and the difficulty of access in some detail.

Cheers

mal

Actually not a bad deal, and here we are a quarter sentury later still dining out on the story.

9th Mar 2010 00:41 UTCAriel S Wall

I would love to get some of the blue lace agate from this region. Some nice large plates with druzy would be great!

Ariel

11th Mar 2010 06:11 UTCMichael Berghäuser

Hello Mike,

I did some trips in Erongo; we have friends in Namibia and had the chance to see some open pockets.

The best way to get in contact is first to spend a lot of money buying specimens from the local big dealers and then to establish a kind of relationship and trust.

As Debbie mentioned the locations are on farms and the owners are not very happy for claimers, because these people destroy/kill their animals and the plants, etc.

Michael

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