The home of the Mountain Zebra

The desert area in the north of the small town Solitaire in Namibia show a fascinating contrastry spectrum of colors. The nappes of the mountains are beginning to be surrounded by the desert sands of the Namib where every drop of water counts for life. This area is the home of the famous Mountain Zebra. The sharp change of the colorful rock beds reminds of the skin of the resident zebras with the sharp black and white stripes. It is not only the black and white color which brings the zebras to this mountain: it is the whitish marble which builds the most important aquifer in this region. The farmer on that Farm Cha-re (former Sparewater) drilled three boreholes with more than 40 m³ water strike in that marble aquifer last year to water up to 1000 Mountain zebras, every night. This symbiosis brings life into this marvelous, but nearly deadly desert habitat.