Sossusvlei

To avoid the heat, we headed off early towards Sossusvlei, driving down a narrow corridor with huge red sloping and curving sand dunes on either side, framed against a deep blue sky. The dunes on the west side stretch all the way to the Atlantic. Its difficult to describe, them, so a picture is worth a thousand words...

We stopped at the 2WD car park to deflate the tyres a little and then skidded and bounced another 5km down the sand (4WD only) track to reach the dry clay pan at the end of the equally dry Tserib riverbed. The red sand of the dunes is incredibly fine and soft. Hot to touch in the sun, but surprisingly cool in the shade. A lone oryx was skulking under the trees in the picnic area, avoiding the sun's burning rays.


We wanted to go up through the Namib Naukluft Park to Swakopmund, but with the precision Germans are famous for, the capital city of Windhoek is situated right in the middle of the country so there would be too much backtracking if we went up through the park.

So we headed out of the desert park and up the Tsarishoogte pass to the Nanania Plateau where the pink dust roads were framed by pale yellow dry grass.  We'd been crossing dozens of dry creekbeds that we would have had to ford in the wet season and had to slow down quickly to actually ford a wet one!  The Landy now has some small mud splashes the colour of calamine lotion on her body.   On to Castle Duwisib which was built in 1909 by a German ex pat in an ardent display of nationalism.  We arrived just as the castle was closing but told we were welcome to enjoy the empty campsite and settle up in the morning.  The sun is just starting to get low in the sky and I need to think about what to make for dinner.