Dunes, a Ghost Town and a very big Canyon

After the very smelly visit to Cape Cross we had a much needed laundry day in Walvis Bay. We’d been on the go every day since arriving in Namibia and both felt like we needed a day to chill, so we booked into an apartment with a separate lounge and kitchen which gave us a little more space to kick back and relax.

There’s no rest for the wicked though and the following morning we were on our way again to our next destination, which was going to be a five hour drive through the mountains and into the deep desert.

We had almost reached the Tropic of Capricorn – a waypoint on the journey when we felt and heard the unmistakeable thud, thud, thud of a flat tyre. We’d finally got one of the punctures that Namibia is renowned for handing out. It was hot work to change the tyre but it wasn’t long before we were back on our way again.

 The only stop on the way was the tiny hamlet of Solitaire which has a petrol station, a tyre repair shop (where we were told our tyre was unfortunately beyond repair) and a café with a sign claiming to have the best apple pie in Namibia. Well that was all the incentive we needed to pop in and give it a try. The verdict – delicious and so big we couldn’t actually finish it.

We finally reached our destination, which was a camp in the desert at a place called Sesriem.  Stepping out of the car here was like opening an oven door with a strong blast of hot air.

We had a hut here with a BBQ station and picnic table on a patio outside and each evening while eating dinner we were observed from a distance by a scavenging Black-Backed Jackal, whom we observed just as curiously in return. We also saw an Oryx wandering around the camp.

Fortunately the hot days descended into cool nights and while it definitely wasn’t cold, the evenings and early mornings were much more comfortable.

The reason we had come to this part of Namibia was to visit Sossusvlei, which is famous for its huge dunes. In fact, ‘Big Daddy’ is the biggest dune in the world.

The dunes are in a National Park and the gates to the park only open at sunrise. The famous shots of the Deadvlei Trees is actually located 60km inside the gates, so if this is what you want to capture, you need to be at the gates for opening time and then travel the 60km’s hoping to arrive in time to get the good light on the dunes. It’s worth knowing that you can pay the entrance fee on the way out so you don’t have to stop for that.

There is a speed limit of 60km in the park so it should take an hour to travel the 60km distance but everyone was exceeding the speed limit so the journey was a bit quicker than this.

At the 60km mark the good tarmac road becomes a 4×4 sandy track for 5km before it reaches the car park for Deadvlei. We had heard conflicting advice about this track and whether it was better to take the shuttle or drive it yourself. Given that we had rented a 4×4 truck we decided to give it a go and drive it ourselves, so after dropping the tyres down to 1.6 bar to cope with the soft sand, we engaged 4×4 and headed off. For the most part the track wasn’t too bad, there were really only a couple of sections where the driving became a little tricky through the deeper drifts of sand, but we made it to the car park without too much trouble.

The car park is about 700m from Deadvlei (meaning dead marsh), famous for its salt pan and ancient fossilised camelthorn trees that are thought to be over 900 years old. Having tried to get there as early as we could the sun hadn’t quite hit the salt pan yet so we were just in time for the good light and for relatively cool temperatures.

After exploring the pan I decided to climb up the dune next to the pan and rather than go round to the main path I went straight up the side. This was a huge mistake as it was very steep and the sand meant that I kept sliding back down. I ended up climbing on all fours and was shattered by the time I had reached the top. I even heard a guide telling one of his guests that I was crazy for coming up that way.

The views made it all worthwhile though.

After a couple of hours we made our way back to the car and started driving out of Sossusvlei, stopping off for photos at some of the dunes on the way back out of the park.

Near the entrance to the park is a turning for another rough road which leads to the Sesriem Canyon. This doesn’t look like much from road level but you can drop down into the canyon and usually go for a walk along it. However there had been some recent heavy rain and as a result the canyon was flooded.  This meant that unfortunately we couldn’t walk all along it but we went as far as we could.

The temperature had been pretty reasonable throughout the morning but by this time it was starting to get up into the high 30’s, so it was time for us to retreat back to our air-conditioned hut. We emerged in the early evening for a sunset beer and BBQ dinner with our watchful, neighbourly Jackal but after our early start we were ready for an early night.

Our next destination was much further South in Namibia and another long drive, so we set out early, again. After fuelling up and readjusting our tyre pressure to 1.8 bar for gravel roads, we set off.

After a smooth quick ride for the first few kilometres on a paved road we turned onto a gravel road which we would follow for the rest of the journey. The gravel road was ok but it was long and straight and there wasn’t much in the way of views so it felt like a very long day.

We stopped at the tiny hamlet of Helmeringhausen to break the journey, which is not much more than a petrol station and a very pretty country hotel and restaurant but it was nice to get out of the truck and stretch our legs. We relaxed in the shade of the hotel gardens with a cool glass of homemade lemonade and a slice of their Apple Cake, which is advertised as the best in Namibia. Well we had tried the best Apple Pie in Namibia so it felt only right to try the best Apple Cake in Namibia and to be fair it was also delicious. More of an Apple Crumble to us Brits than a cake but in our humble opinion, the better of the two we’d had this week.

From Helmeringhausen it wasn’t too far to our final destination of the day of Aus. We had decided to stay here to break our journey and the next morning set off early for the coastal town of Luderitz.

Not far from Aus is an area called the Klein Aus Vista, which is home to wild horses and a lot of Oryx. It’s a real desert and how the horses manage to scratch a living here is amazing. It is believed that they came from German army horses that were set free when the Germans left Namibia during WW1. We were lucky to see some right at the side of the road, as well as at a waterhole that has been built especially for them.

Just outside Luderitz, and the reason we had travelled to this part of the country, lies the abandoned mining town of Kolmanskop. At one time this was the richest town in the world after the discovery of diamonds in the area.

Kolmanskop was established in 1908 and many mod-cons were installed in the town including a large hospital (with its own wine cellar!), power station, bowling alley, swimming pool, ice factory and the first x-ray machine in the southern hemisphere.

The town began to decline in the 1920’s as the diamonds began to be exhausted and when, in 1928, huge diamond deposits were discovered 270km away, many of the inhabitants abruptly left.

The last inhabitants left in 1956 and now the town is a monument to the diamond rush as it decays and is slowly submerged by the sand of the surrounding desert. It is a popular tourist destination and the guided tour was really interesting, but for me, the abandoned buildings half filled with sand were the real highlight and a photographer’s playground.

The astonishing thing about the diamonds in Kolmanskop was that they just littered the ground and could simply be picked up off the floor. This led the authorities to create a large Forbidden Zone around the diamond fields. Any unauthorised access was banned and all workers were searched when leaving. The x-ray machine was actually for the workers to ensure they had not ingested any diamonds rather than for medical purposes!

After exploring Kolmanskop we headed to the town of Luderitz where we were due to spend the night. Luderitz is a major port town – one of only a handful on the West coast of Southern Africa. As such it is a fairly large industrial town although there is some colonial German architecture to admire.

We were coming to the end of our time in Namibia but we had one more place we wanted to visit – Fish River Canyon, which is the second largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon.

We had planned to stay the night in the town of Keetmanshoop which is about a 4 hour drive from Luderitz on a good paved road.

Just near Keetmanshoop is the Quiver Tree Forest which has a concentration of the desert Quiver Trees. The hollow branches of these trees were used to create quivers for the arrows of the San people – hence the name.

We had a bit of a surprise in the evening when prolonged torrential rain flooded the small studio apartment we were staying in. Water poured in from behind the toilet (thankfully not from the sewer) and was dripping through the ceiling at numerous points. Fortunately for us the owners of the apartment were able to stem the flow before it completely flooded us and we had enough containers to catch the drips until the rain subsided.

We were concerned that the heavy rain would make the journey to Fish River Canyon much harder. However by the following morning, aside from a few puddles, most of the water had drained away and the dirt roads were in pretty good shape apart from the last few kilometres before reaching the park.

We visited a number of the viewpoints over the canyon on very rough tracks but descending to the canyon floor is banned at this time of year and even in the winter hiking is only allowed with a permit. With it being the rainy season and the recent heavy rain we had hoped to see the river flowing at the bottom but unfortunately the river bed was mostly dry with just a few pockets of water.

After a picnic lunch we retraced our steps back to Keetmanshoop where we spent the night before driving the long, tarmac road back to Windhoek for our flight out of Namibia the next day.