From Swakopmund the desert route leading southwards is peppered with jewels. Dramatic desert scenery, towering sand dunes and majestic mountains . . .
After The Delight’s delicious breakfast spread, the day’s journey begins with the stretch between crashing sea and sand dunes. A pink flash of flamingos tinges the water outside Walvis Bay before the salt road peters out, becoming gravel, and the plains become humdrum for a while, but only for a while. Soon the striated hills of the Kuiseb Pass come into view and you find yourself weaving through an earth tapestry that takes you out of your everyday perception of life on a trip (no drugs needed!) into another world.
When you catch your breath, the Gaub Pass and the Tropic of Capricorn sign come next and as you drive towards Solitaire, bands of red sand start to appear, glamorous mountains, gemsbok and camelthorn trees laden with social weaver nests. And, it’s hard to keep going because you want to stop and photograph it all.
Solitaire, once a sleepy outpost, is now a bustling centre and the McGregor bakery makes tray after tray of the late Moose McGregor’s famous apple pie the whole day long. I bought a steaming slice fresh out the oven, sharing it with the car guard before photographing the old jammies, the hot apple burning our fingers.
From there, it is only another 30km southwards to Namib Desert Lodge, where the petrified dunes form an epic backdrop to the lodge, marking the spot. And from the top of them, you have one of the best vistas in the area. Ripples of sand take flight off the edge of the dunes onto a vast landscape below dotted with the green line of underground water and fringed with the purple-blue of the Naukluft mountains. At the lodge’s poolside, I took some time to relax as gemsbok wandered around the base of the petrified dunes and a warthog snuffled about.
In this desert wonderland there are a lot of ‘D’s’ – Desert, Dunes, Delight. And ‘S’s’ – Solitaire, Sesriem, Sossusvlei, Sensuous, Sensational, Spectacular. Here, Nature takes out its paintbox and adds a whole new range of colours.
Waking up in the wee hours, I joined the lodge’s guided trip to Sossusvlei as the sun rose, waiting with the other vehicles at the Sesriem entrance for the gates to open. (Although collectively referred to as ‘Sossusvlei’, the area is home to several vleis or seasonal pans, Sossusvlei being one of them.) Another 60km and a 4x4 drive through soft sand, we joined the Deadvlei pilgrimage, a 1km walk through the desert to view the ancient camelthorn trees in the chalky pan. The more energetic of the group trudged up Big Daddy dune. To escape the ever-increasing throng of people, I walked to the far side of the pan where momentarily (and if I timed it right) I could tune in and tune out, and pay tribute to the ancient earth. I always imagine the trees dancing, waltzing or ice-skating in the pan, moving in swirling loops of time. They look like that to me. Infinity has caught a movement or life in their windblown bark that defies time. Walking around Deadvlei is like walking into a time capsule, taking you back a thousand years. One of the most photogenic sites in Namibia, it is an inspiration of desert magnificence.
A wind whipped up, lifting sand in waves of grit that swept over the pan at intervals. At our appointed meeting time, I found the rest of the group huddled in the vehicle. A short drive away, Sossusvlei provided a quiet haven to eat some lunch and walk up the dune to appreciate its beauty, only properly visible from above. On our way back to the Sesriem entrance gates, we walked through the small Sesriem Canyon, following the route of the Tsauchab River, which fed by rainfall inland, hurtles through its depths every few years on its way to fill up Sossusvlei. Here, curtailed by the dunes, it shimmers for a few months until it sinks into the sand. The Sossusvlei area, like the Twyfelfontein rock engravings, is a top Namibian bestseller, its story heard by hundreds every day. The wind whistled as I went to sleep that night, with dune images gliding through my head and the whispering of ancient tales told over aeons.
My desert tripping continued the next day as I drove southwards, taking the C27 through an exquisite Namib playground where apricot swathes of sand framed oryx and ostrich in breathtaking scenery. I was, to put it simply and borrowing a line from the old movie, ‘at play in the fields of the lord’.
A soft-sand corrugated D707 led me to my overnight stop with a thump, depositing me at Namtib Biosphere Reserve where I met up with friends, set up my tent under a camelthorn tree and shared stories around the fire. When the wind picked up, we said our goodnights and I crawled into my tent. It strengthened as if the desert gods were conversing in great gusts, steadily increasing the volume as they elaborated on the day’s events. When I realised that I was not going to get any sleep, I fought the sail-like tent into the vehicle and climbed in after it. It was just going to be one of those nights and part of the joys of travel.
It didn’t detract from the perfect day and the sun that rose in the morning, lighting up the landscape in gold and putting all of the night’s boisterousness to rest.
(Join me week after next as I continue to Klein-Aus Vista, visiting the wild horses of the Namib and exploring the old diamond-town of Kolmanskop)