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Published: October 7th 2010
China is off for few days of National Holidays, my office in HK is off for a long week-end....it's week-end time, and what do you do on week-end, you go on small trips...this time, Sossusvlei!
Sossusvlei lays 4 to 5 hours south-west of Windhoek in the middle of the Namib Desert. There are no paved road to here, and a lot of gravels on the "road"...and, your tyres and windscreens are not really insured, so I took a tour!
3 days, 2 nights organized by Chameleon Safaris. We were only 7 for a bus of 12 seats, so all the room to enjoy the ride. The ride was smooth across the sem-desertic Namib Desert...I could have taken thousand of pics with all these views. The landscape is pretty similar to Arizona, but the vegetation is really different.
We stay for 2 nights at the Desert Camp. Pretty nice place...and the view were amazing. I shared my room with a young brazilian guy. Fun, he just had a baby 6 months ago and was travelling alone for 10 days, seems it made him feel better to know I was a dad too.
I was amazed by the amount
of wildlife around us. Ostriches, Oryx, Springboeks, Jackal, the all lot. Sadly, most of them are really shy, so you end up taking pictures of their back only! But we saw a lot of animals!
Early morning wake up to go to see the dunes. The park door only open at 7am. There is only one camp/lodge inside the park, and it doesn't look very nice at all. Meaning...for the sunrise, you are simply not in the dunes.
From the entry of the park to Sossusvlei there is around 60km on a nice road. After this, you climb on 4x4 for few kilometers. Our first stop was Deadvlei. This place is one of these places that you can qualify as "out of this world"!
It's dry, it's hot and it's amazing. Deadvlei is a pan of white clay surrounded by huge dunes. It's actually the bed of a former river. There are still numerous dead acacia trees all around. These have been there for 900 years...dead...not moving, out of this world! The highest dune around is Big Daddy dune, altitude 360 meter from Deadvlei, I gave a miss on that one. Just enjoy the pics, and
hope you can make to this place one day. Enjoy for now, not many tourists, nobody trying to sell you something, a really nice experience.
After this, we made our way to Sossuvlei itself for a nice little picnic. The area has actually been turn into a huge picnic area.
Our guide kept us Dune 45 for the end. Another climb. The tourists were gone, it was 2pm, and hot! But the wind had started to blow also, giving us the feeling we were the first to climb for the day...even if we were not. Climbing this very soft sand...is a pretty exhausting experience.
Later on, little dip in the pool with a beer, before going back on the bus for few kilometers to visit...and walk the Sesriem Canyon. Little narrow canyon of nearly 30 meters depth....really fun place for a late afternoon walk.
The camp was nice. A self-catering experience...meaning...there is a nice bar, but our guide was in charge of cooking one night a BBQ, the next a nice curry. Nothing fancy, but a really nice experience. Oh, they call it a camp, but it is actually more of a lodge!
Made our
way safely to Windhoek without even puncturing a single tyre...not that I had wished for it.
My next entry is more of a solo trip, back on the internet...back to work a little also.
For next entry, it will really depend on the speed to upload the picutres...not really fast here.
See you soon, from a little corner of Africa!
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The Travel Camel
Shane Dallas
Dead Vlei
It looks a fantastic place to visit; I'll need to include into my ever expanding future travel plans!