Spitzkoppe is a sharp granite pyramid rising about 670 metres straight out of the flat Namib plains, its summit reaching 1,728 metres. Bare, orange-brown and alone on the horizon, it earned the name "the Matterhorn of Namibia." The rock weathers away in curved slabs, which round the smaller domes beside it and, in one place, have worn clean through to leave a free-standing natural arch. All of it is the crystallised core of a magma chamber that never erupted. The granite itself set deep underground about 120 million years ago, as the supercontinent Gondwana tore apart and the South Atlantic was born. It stood exposed once the softer rock above it wore away.
At either end of the day the low sun sets the rock glowing — pale rose in the cool morning, deep copper by late afternoon — before the sky above fills with stars. With almost no light pollution for hundreds of kilometres, Spitzkoppe draws photographers who frame the Milky Way through that granite arch. In shaded hollows nearby, San hunter-gatherers painted the granite thousands of years ago, and the finest surviving panel can now be reached only with a local guide. Today the whole massif is run by the ǂGaingu Community Conservancy, which since 2003 has managed dispersed campsites tucked among the boulders. There you pitch a tent, watch dassies scramble over the warm stone, and fall asleep under one of the darkest skies on the continent.