WOW - WHAT AN AMAZING COUNTRY! We are having a fantastic time here in the Namib Desert! The weather has been glorious - much warmer than we thought (35C during the day) and not as cold as we expected. The sand dunes (22,000 km from Robben Island South Africa all the way up to Gabon) are fabulous - so red and so big! There are 4 types of sand dunes, star, lateral, transverse and buchen. We arrived here late Monday afternoon after driving from Windhoek over the Great Escarpment - incredible scenery! Good infrastructure although most of that drive was on gravel roads. We headed out to watch the sunset and enjoy sundowners - an amazing end to the day!
We are staying at the Sossus Dune Lodge which is inside the Sosussvlei National Park. This allows us to be ot one hour before sunrise and one hour after sunset. Our rooms are all large wooden rondovels with thatch roofs and a balcony that overlooks the Namib desert and the dunes - beautiful! It is unbelievably peaceful here. The Sossus Lodge is government run property (Namibia Wildlife Resorts NLW) and the service leaves something to be desired but you can't beat the location and views! The employees are all Government employees!
We have been out before sunrise (leaving here at 430am) both mornings so that we are at a perfect spot each morning to enjoy the dunes as the colours change at first light. Tuesday morning we enjoyed watching the hot air balloons take off and fly over the dunes. The day was amazing - we walked up one of the dunes and across a salt pan, we ate a cooked bush breakfast (eggs sausage bacon cereals muesli yoghurt bread coffee hot chocolate juice) watched by a black backed jackal and surrounded by the huge red dunes. Running down the sand dunes was amazing - just sinking into the very soft warm sands! At the end of the day yesterday we drove back to Sosussvlei (about 60km from our Lodge) for the sunset. Our guide Michael is hugely experienced and well know - and he managed to arrange for us all to go back and stay longre in the dunes. Cna you imagine drinking gin and tonics at the base of a huge red star sand dune, watching the sun go dwn and the moon rise with all the hanging light and colours - then climbing the dune and sinking halfway up under the full moon - the top layer of the sand cool to the touch but just a few inches down still really warm from the day's sun? It was awesome - we were the only people in the park and the silence was amazing! You could even hear the slight "hoooo" as the sands moved a little as the temperatures changed. An incredible experience!
Then we drove back to Sossus Lodge where we ate dinner (pork chops or grilled kudu (raised on a farm for consumption) sitting on the lodge deck watching the dunes under the full moon in the clear skies!
At the moment it's 10am we are on the deck in the shade and about to depart Sossusvlei for Swakopmund on the coast North of here! Too busy enjoying the adventure - no time to write the journal so I must run! More later.
LOL
Jan & Terry
Our guide Michael
Cheers ..... Jan Umbach
Sent from my iPad
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