Dreamscapes

01/05/10

Now in Swakupmond, and the days plans have radically changed. Today was meant to be the day I throw myself out of a really small but perfectly good airplane. Have been dreading it for months and was all supposed to be over by now. Wasn’t accounting for the rain, clouds and sandstorm though. It’s the second time I’ve geared myself up to it and it’s been cancelled due to bad conditions. Maybe I should take it as an omen and just not do it.

Been a busy few days, with lots of amazing scenery. Namibia has to be one of the most dramatic places I’ve ever been. From the huge brown scree piles just past the border to the giant slab faced escarpments towering over the Orange River and its black sand dunes, on to the brown rubble and 300m deep ravines and gulleys of Fish River Canyon. Yesterday was the best of all. We were taken deep into the Namib Desert and towards the coast, where there are 300 kms of towering red sand dunes that rise above the hard baked desert floor. We went to Dune 45, the only dune out of 60 that you are really allowed to climb. Not sure how this restriction is enforced 300 kms of sand. Dune 45 is 150m high, and unsurprisingly it’s not an easy climb. Trudging uphill in soft deep sand, especially for Nick who’s still suffering from his vertigo thingy.

We climbed with the moon still high and the sky lightening to the east. The top of the dune was quite busy so we picked a spot further down next to our tour leader and resident photography expert Gareth. From our perch we got to watch the desert floor and surrounding dunes light up. As the light pours down the dunes and highlights and shadows pick out the curves, all you can hear is the crazy clicking of cameras. Some people have 2 or 3 cameras with them on this trip so they can get every angle with every lens. The sunrise was nice, but it was seeing the red and black shapes made by the ridge of the dunes that everyone was there to see.

The dunes of Sossusvlei.

 

From Dune 45 we drove further into Sossusvlei which is the valley that runs between the dunes. Here we met a bushman called Bussman who took us on a hike around the dunes explaining how plants, animals, and the old bushman people of Southern Africa survived in a place that gets about 3 inches of rain once every twenty years. His stories of the bushman people were amazing. Sadly few live in the desert any more. The western world declared it was wrong of the bushman children to be denied access to education and took them all away from their homes. They were taught how to read and write up until the age of 11. This left them with an education inadequate of helping them survive in the modern world, but also stopping them from learning the skills they needed to return to the bush and to families. The first thing a child was taught in the bush was how to recognize their mother’s footprints in the sand so they could follow them home. Up until the 1920’s it was legal to hunt and kill bushmen. Some people even used to keep the children and raise them as pets.

On the walk we learnt that ‘vlei’ means ‘place where water comes to rest and plants live’. We were taken to visit Deadvlei, which is now an area cut off from any further flood flows as the dunes have enclosed the area. When reaching the brow of the dune that has enclosed Dead Vlei you encounter an unearthly hard white flat floor surrounded by towering red dunes. Team that with the blackened dead trunks of trees sticking up into the deep blue sky and it is photographic heaven. Walking across the sun baked limestone floor with the wind blocking out all other sounds is magical. It has to be one of the most unique places I have and probably ever will visit. 

Spectacular Deadvlei

We spent 5 hours baking in the desert that morning before packing up camp and getting in the bus to do another long hot and dusty drive. Driving further north we went through flat planes of short yellow pampas grass, then to flat planes with nothing for about 100 km. Next we went through deeply undulating canyons up and down about 20 metre rises and falls, then onto sharp granite canyons that looked distinctly like something out of a sci-fi movie. Each of these different terrains going on for 50 km or more without a person or building to be seen. Namibia has to be one of the most empty and extreme places on earth.

Our driver, John enjoying the miles of peace and quiet.