So pay special attention to where you are walking until proper signage is posted here. Not finding the Quivertree Forest entrance gate was frustrating, but getting lost in the Giant's Playground was a more serious issue. Otherwise, there would be better directional signs at both places. It appears to us that the farm owner doesn't really care whether you easily find your way around these two sites or not. Other campers we followed couldn't find it either. It's not marked and we had to drive around the large camping site searching for it (a fence blocks entrance except at the gate). We had trouble locating the entrance gate to the walking path. It's not really a forest but a dense stand of Quivertrees spread around rock hills. The Quiver Tree Forest area is located at some 14 kilometers. The Quivertree Forest is nice and makes for some great photos against the blue sky. Some of the Quiver Tree Forests unique Aloe trees near Keetmanshoop, Namibia. This all might sound funny, but it wasn't not knowing where you are with the temperature 36 C. The town lies about 285 miles (460 km) south of Windhoek, the national capital, with which it is connected by road. Our guess is that some jokester removed some of the path signs and they have not been replaced. Keetmanshoop, town, southeastern Namibia. Luckily, we were able to spot the brown water tower off in the distance and walked in that direction to eventually get back to the parking lot. After 20 long minutes of this wandering, we eventually climbed to the top of a tall rock to try to get some perspective. No one else was there when we visited in the late afternoon so calling out to others was futile. It's easy to walk in the complete wrong direction and not really know where you are. All you can see are more and more rock piles. The walking path is set below all the rocks so it's impossible to see the horizon to help locate where you are. All the rock constellations, while beautiful, look the same after a while and it's nearly impossible to remember if you passed them before (some seemed staged while others are amazingly authentic). With no signs, we soon became disoriented and didn't know which way to go. While it proceeds in a right-hand circle around the site, it also twists and turns all the time. But after a while the signs stopped and the main path branched off to here and there. It starts out fine with a couple of white arrow signs pointing in the right direction. The danger here is that the circular path through the stones is not well marked. A tall brown water tower stands next to it. The quiver tree itself can be found in several regions of Namibia, but here is the largest. There's a parking lot with a nice modern toilet. The Quiver Tree Forest in Namibia near Keetmanshoop has been a national monument since 1955. It's located off a gravel road 5 km north of the Quivertree Forest (same entrance fee). The dolorites are between 160 and 180 million year old, and in the Keetmanshoop region cover an area of 180 000 km2.Giant's Playground is a maze of stone piles that seemingly stretches on forever. The softer parts of the stone and the top layer of the earht's crust erodated away, which left the dolorites exposed. The dolorites are magma that was pressed up, but cooled off just below the earth's surface. The dolorites at the quiver tree forest and giant's playground form part of the bigger sill complex. There’s camping, Igloo bungalows and guest-house accommodation on the farm. The geologist will tell you otherwise, but I favour the romantic view that piles of the black blocks were laid down by creative giants. Take your camera and lose yourself in the floral wonderland, and then drive the short distance to the area’s other major attraction, the Giant’s Playground. Sure, you’ll see quiver trees, Aloe dichotoma, all over southern Namibia, but it’s the sheer numer and size of the distinctive forked aloes found amoung the jungle of massive dolerite boulders on the Gariganuns farm outside Keetmanshoop that makes the Quivertree forest so magical.
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