Advertisement
Published: October 16th 2012
Edit Blog Post
On arrival back in Windhoek from Swakopmund, I picked up the hatchback Kia, we were planning on taking down to Sossuvlei. That night at the hostel I was staying at, I met Kiger, the American girl I had arranged to go down with. The next morning, just before we were going to pick up Andrew, another American, we had a big problem with the car, in that wouldn't start.
This was a bit of a disaster, because we only had one night down there and in order for it to be worthwhile, we needed to get going early. We walked back to the rental agency, who gave as a replacement, after we had to wait for the guy to get out of bed and come in. We did end up getting an upgrade and an automatic, though. We picked up Andrew and got going at about 10 a.m., about 2 hours later than we had intended.
As it was a right hand drive, I said I would drive down. I was also looking forward to driving, as it had been a while since I was behind the wheel. The first part of the drive to a turn off past
a town called Rehoboth about 100km, was pretty straightforward on a nice tarred road. After this gravel route began and continued for the next 250km approximately. To say it was a bumpy ride would be an understatement and there was a constant worry that we would either get a puncture or crack the windscreen, neither of which were covered under our rental agreement.
The landscape became gradually more and more spectacular as we approached the Sesriem gate of the Namib Naukluft Park, which we arrived at by 6 p.m. After paying our fees, we drove straight into the park. We set out to get to Dune 45, which, as the name would suggest, is 45 km from the entrance. Our aim was to get there for sunset and even with a few stops to take some photos of the landscape and wildlife en route, we made it and even climbed to the top for the sunset.
The colours of the dune and the surrounding area were beyond belief and we stayed a while longer admiring the views. Darkness fairly quickly as we returned to gate of the park. The gate was due to be close at 6.15 and
when we arrived at 6.30, the guard balled us out of it. I put my tent up and after some dinner, we went to sleep, with the other two sleeping in the car.
We had set our alarms for around 5, as we wanted to get to the Sossuvlei area, about 60km into the park, for sunrise. I had no trouble waking up as I was absolutely freezing and caught only an hour or two of sleep. Were in the queue to get to the park at about 5.45 and it opened, shortly afterwards. The tarred road ends 60km away and we caught a shuttle bus for the short sand track, only accessible by 4x4s, which took us first to Deadvlei. We climbed the dune and as we did the sun rose, which was spctacular. The Deadvlei is surrounded by sound dunes in a 3 sided amphitheatre. There are some remaining skeletons of trees, which are believed to be 900 years old and are scorched black from the sun.
Afterwards we went to the Sossusvlei. The Sossuvlei is a clay pan covered insalt rich-sand. We were lucky to be there for one of the times there was water
there. The dunes around it are amongst the most famous in this area. Although, the Sossuvlei is the more famous, I was more impressed by the Deadvlei. There was something extremely eery by the white coloured clay pan, with skeleton trees and the surrounding dunes. The area in general is spectacular and is possibly the most beautiful place I have been in Africa so far.
The drive back was similar to the one there and I nearly got out of the car to kiss the tar road, when we got back on it just at Rehoboth, without having sustained puncture or damage to our windscreen. I was under a bit of pressure to get back to Windhoek, as I had booked an overnight bus to Cape Town, which I did not want to miss, but ended up being back in plenty of time.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.117s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0795s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb