Last Thursday I decided to burn some airline miles and some time and go camping for 3 weeks in Namibia before my Alaska work season starts up. Namibia is the country that lies just Northwest of South Africa.
Today I find myself walking around the Capitol Windhoek and came across this unique display of meteorites... 33 of them ...well maybe 32... Looks like somebody pilfered one. They are from the Gibeon Meteor shower ... A massive meteor of about 25 tons that broke up and fell here over an area 210 miles long by about 65 miles wide. This happened thousands of years ago but pieces are still being dug up today. Don't want to be caught doing it though or you'll end up in the local gulag.
Here's an old building I came across from when Germany had colonial control over the territory around 1910 there abouts. The sign reads Kaiser Landesvermessung, it used to be the old colonial surveyors office, now it's the Namibian office of finance and debt. I guess surveying didn't pay.
Tomorrow I have rented a truck and am heading east into the Kalahari desert and Botswana then north into Angola and circle around back into Namibia basically just exploring and shooting pictures. Hope to upload some here when I get back, I didn't bring my laptop so kinda putzy with the iPhone.
Here's the rig...keeps me above the hyenas at night...
Check out my Daughter's blog posts from March & April, 2011. She was there collecting for her on going research. You might get some ideas.
http://blogs.wabash.edu/whatsthatplant/2011/03/
http://blogs.wabash.edu/whatsthatplant/2011/04/
She also had a roof top camper. Also for snake protection.
Oh Wow...Cool...thanks Dave!
Very cool. Would love to do some adventure travel like that. Wife needs her creature comforts though.
I have a watch with a dial made from a slice of that meteorite. The pic is not mine, but very similar. I think the meteorite was found to have hit Earth around 30,000 years ago and is something like 4 billion years old. I like the idea of having something on my wrist that might frikkin' pre-date the earth (pinkie finger to corner of mouth for emphasis).
It's a great conversation starter with some of my acquaintances who peg the Universe as being a few thousand years old.
:good:
I liked the first hand account of the Black Mamba sighting.
yikes!!!!!
Thanks
look forward to the photos.
Safe travels.
The NE boundary is pretty intersting up there by the Zambesi R. quite an odd shape.
Dave's daughter had some photos inher blog sans hippos and crocs.
Yes..I read her blog...now I'll also be keeping an eye out for the weed and grass specimens she collected. I hear the Hippo is the biggest man killer in Africa.
I think we should all give Daryl advise on where his next trip should be.
I say THE MOON!!!
> Yes..I read her blog...now I'll also be keeping an eye out for the weed and grass specimens she collected. I hear the Hippo is the biggest man killer in Africa.
yeah, land whales.
I remember Mr. G. posted years ago about hippos and whales having some common dna strings.
> I think we should all give Daryl advise on where his next trip should be.
>
> I say THE MOON!!!
:good:
Won't keep out the Lions or Jags.
B-)
You actually SLEEP in that thing where there are real live wild animals?!?!?!?!?
Thanks for posting the pictures Daryl. I always enjoy your photos.
As always, Excellent!
Question: what application did you use to generate this comparison map?
SWMBO Too ?
Cheers,
Derek
> You actually SLEEP in that thing where there are real live wild animals?!?!?!?!?
Pretty much, but animals such as Lions are only found in Namibia's Etosha Nat'l Park and you are required to camp in designated campgrounds in that particular area and be tucked in prior to sunset. I'm more concerned with baboons stealing my truck keys or other important items and of course the always unpredictable human element.
> As always, Excellent!
>
> Question: what application did you use to generate this comparison map?
>
>
No application Brad. I was doing a google image search for a map of Namibia and this came up as a result ... Just coincidence that it was compared to my neck of the woods. I wouldn't mind knowing what they used to produce it though.
> SWMBO Too ?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Derek
No SWMBO ... She has to work. But she doesn't mind. Because in August when I am working she gets to take off on her own spectacular holiday.
Daryl,
In 2011 I sold some Leica 530 gear to a surveyor in Windhoek. Herman Strydom. Very interesting guy. He is one of what I think is only a small handful of surveyors in all of Namibia.
Here is a list of projects he's done. An erven is a lot as we know it.
http://www.sasurv.com/print.php?id=references
He sounds like someone who any surveyor could sit down with and have a nice chat!
He did say that I should stop to see him if I ever get to Namibia. (LOL! I have a hard time getting out of Wisconsin!) Feel free to sub for me and look him up if you want when you get back to the big city! Here is an interesting email I received from him regarding the survey work and system in Namibia:
Hi Dave
Yes we have a very good and uniform survey system
Just a few quick notes , I will forward some examples
Our system is based on the South African system and basically exist of a triangulation network covering the whole country
It started of with a accurate baseline and astronomical obs. and extended by triangulation
Basically primary triangulation with legs of 60-80km, secondary triangulation with legs of approx. 30km en finally in developed area’swith beacons spaced 5-10km apart
Accuracy of the secondary triangulation is approx. 10-25cm (farm surveys) and the towns are very accurate approx 1-5cm.
Namibia is not as developed as South Africa , we only have 3500 of these beacons spaced through the county and SA has approx. 40 000 beacons , we call them Trigonometrical beacons.
This was further broken down to Town Survey marks. This was a brass peg in a steel box placed in the street intersections and in developed area’s you are theoretically always in town within 300m – 1000m of such a point.
The beauty of the system is that the whole country is on a homogenous continues co-ordinate system, used for all topographical and legal work. There is also a précised leveled networked covering the whole country along the major road networks. This is based on tidal gauges.
South Africa has a similar system as you describe providing both real-time and static data. In SA you then basically receive a real-time position being within a few centimeters accurate of the erf beacon.
Our legal system is based on what we call a physical cadastre , therefore putting more weight on the actual beacon on the ground and it’s description but in practice we have a numerical cadastre. Every property is surveyed and has a co-ordinate value for each property corner. We have some old historical “local” system bat basically it is very simple and possible to calculate the distance form the corner of one properly in one town to another property in another town 100km away and if you observe a static baseline you would probably agree to 25cm accuracy.
You would practically setup a base any ware, survey in one known point and based on this you would locate all other property beacons. The relationship between WGS’84 and our national system (Schwarzeck – Bessel 1841) is such that with a navigational accuracy and the standard relationship you can navigate to approx. with 5m of any property beacon.
In practice we need to include at least three known point in a GPS calibration and need to find enough original beacons to proof that our survey is in harmony with original survey.
All legal surveys are submitted to our Surveyor General’s Office and are public records , legal surveyors have free access to these records and the public has to pay a small fee to get copies.
These records are there to either protect the surveyor or to proof that he had made a mistake , which basically never happens – we have very strict guidelines how to produce and check the survey records submitted.
The system is such that there are no court cases dealing with ownership problems and any discrepancy is easily sorted out by the surveyor. The only court cases where to determine definitions “what is the middle of a river” or dealing with old surveys – what to do if the numerical and verbal descriptions differ. We have a few court cases regarding prescription (30 year period)
I hope the above indicates something of our survey system, if I went of in the wrong direction please let me know.
Regards
Herman
Dave...oh man...I sure wish you had dropped that a day earlier. I would love to go visit him. It's about 5pm here now and I'm just finishing stocking my truck for the push to Botswana. I'll be leaving early in the morning but I will certainly try to make contact with him on my return in a couple three weeks time. Always good to sit down with one from the brotherhood.Thanks for including his email...
I'll drop him a line and mention yourself and let him know I'll be back in town. Cheers
I'll be away from the Internet for part or all of the duration but I do have a SPOT GPS transmitter and will activate it once a day with a custom 45 character message to basically let my wife know my camping position. I think it posts on the SPOT website as well...I'll have to dig up the URL ...
