Date of Entry: November 3rd 2016
Date of Writing: February 24th 2017
The day starts early, even by over landing standards, the darkness still entire as we pack a morning bag and crawl out of our tents and in to peter tosh. No packing up the tents, no breakfast, just into the truck and off to the exit of the campsite where we wait a few minutes for the gate to be open sometime around 5 am. From there it’s about a half hour drive in the darkness to our destination, the world famous dune 45 in the heart of the Namib Desert.
I’m worried we won’t make it for sunrise but as we pull up in the sandy parking lot and Honary points out our path while pulling out stuff for breakfast it’s still pretty dark. One by one we all start up the sand as a tiny bit of light trickles into the sky, though the sun remains invisible. It doesn’t take long scrambling up the steep incline of soft sand for me to start breathing hard, dune climbing is hard work.
We’re lucky as we’re some of the first people there, everyone having woken up on time and therefore allowing us some tranquility in this Namibian tourist mecca. As I continue to scramble up the top edge of the dune light continues to flood the sky illuminating the endless desert around us, though the sun stays hidden behind the endless fields of dunes spreading out in all directions. It’s insanely beautiful, and I’m Pushing hard to make it to the top of the dune prior to sunrise.
Eventually I pass by Norman who sadly is not feeling well and stopped three quarters of the way up. After a few words of encouragement I continue up to the top crest. I’m not last in the group but I’m certainly closer to that end than to first.
Gasping for breath I beat the sun to the top of the dune and take a seat. It’s our group and a handful of other people, including one lone photographer who’s continued past our dune to another one just below us making for an excellent photo prop. As I sit in the cool pre sunrise sand, i turn my eyes to the ever growing light behind the mountains of red sand, and watch in awe as the sun emerges for the first moments of the day. It’s likely the most impressive sunrise I’ve ever seen.
As the sun continues to climb it feels like the master painter adding colours to his canvas, finishing the masterwork. The sun brings out the redness in the endless mountains of sand and the clouds provide the perfect shroud to the burning ball of orange creating various hues across the desert sky. I’m lost in the magic of the place. Completely. And I can’t stop smiling. This is the highlight of my time in Africa, at least so far.
As the sun continues to rise I get some strangers heading down to take some paint me jack photos of me and sadly they don’t turn out the best as I’m too much the focus, but oh well. I’ll still never forget this place.
As the sun rises and the colours dissipate we’re still left with an incredibly beautiful desert all around us. This is the heart of it, the kind of desert you could imagine in star wars or lawrence of arabia, and I’m suddenly desperate to explore more deserts. The sahara, the Gobi, any of them. It’s a landscape I love every time I visit, be it the guajira desert in colombia, the strange landscapes of cappadocia in turkey, or the Atacama desert in northern Chile anywhere else.
I could spend all day up on the dune, even considering the growing heat from the rising sun, but there’s lots more planned for today, and such is the tragedy of organized tours that we have limited time everywhere, no matter how impressive the place. We head down slowly, regretfully, marvelling at the soft and puffy red sand. Some people opt to run down the side of the dune, but I choose instead to stay and take some photos of my German friends Peter and Kathrin heading down towards the truck.
Down at the bottom we find that Honary has prepared french toast with maple syrup, fruit and peanut butter all options. Hiking up the dune (really just a 20 minute walk though a hard one) has built an appetite for me and I eat too much french toast watching what now almost equates to a swarm of tourists heading up the dune. Thank god we got here early. French toast in hand I take a little walk through the bottom of the desert, posing for a photo with Norman, taking some photos of the desert below the dunes, and marvelling at the still incredible sky filled with white fluffy clouds.
After breakfast we head back to the campsite and get to packing up our tents as quickly as we can. Today is a long day and we have a lot in store for us. Honestly Dune 45 would be impressive enough to fill any day but we’re far from done and soon enough we’re back in Peter Tosh heading again towards Dune 45, though this time we drive past it, towards the smaller numbered dunes (they were numbered for proximity to the coast.), we’re heading to the tallest dune in the desert, Big Daddy, and some salt pans nestled inside the Sossusvlei Dunes of Namibia. Of course, like most good places it’s a bit hard to get to, and peter tosh can only take us so far into the desert so we pull over in a sandy parking lot in the middle of the desert where I snap some photos including one of our resident Dutchman Bas (who curiously shares the same name as one of my favourite rappers (I suspect he may be a fat black man in disguise) with his broken glasses. Then we’re transferred into a few separate 4×4 vehicles to go deeper still into the desert. As we wait for the trucks though Norman and I head up a hill to stake some photos of one of the most picturesque dunes I’ve ever seen.
After maybe a 15 minute rough ride through purely based sand roads bouncing up and down in the huge buggy like creations we climb out and start our walk in the shadow of bid daddy. It’s crowded, but the desert so perfect and massive that it doesn’t really matter. Besides there’s a nice division as half the people are taking the time to climb up Big Daddy, which must be incredibly hot. Instead we are just climbing over some smaller dunes of golden sand heading to some strange and beautiful salt pans nestled between the tallest dunes, complete with a petrified forest that had once grown out of the water, which has now turned to only hard white earth with an insanely high salt content. I head down into the forest entirely enthralled by this other wordly landscape and immediately heading out through the forest, away from the crowds towards the base of Big Daddy Dune, a stunning 325 meters tall. Soon enough I’m utterly alone on the salt plans, walking quickly despite the heat to make sure I can make it all the way across without holding up the group.
After taking a seat at the foot of Big Daddy and listening to some music while looking back towards the other dunes which seem like they should be on mars and not our planet I force myself to get up and walk back across the scorching hot salt pans towards the others. I hate to make people wait for me, so I walk quick with music as motivation, singing as I go when there’s no one around.
Coming back into the petrified forest I find Trig, Matt, Norman, and Bas trying to take some Bolivian Salt Flat style perspective photos and quickly led my expertise. I didn’t expect to find another place here where this was possible, but they turn out pretty okay and I get a few of my own after taking some for my two Canadian friends.
From here it’s a hop, skip and bumpy ride in the back of a four by four with a friendly swedish family back to Peter Tosh, where, while waiting for the others, I find a beautiful and fascinating white and black crow to pass the time, as well as another Oryx lazing around nearby the parking lot.
Eventually all of us make it back to the parking lot after a few delays and confusion since we all came back at different times and then we’re off heading towards our campsite where Honary tells us we can expect to see some rare mountain zebras. As we drive though we get a special surprise sighting another famous african animal on the side of the road and blessing stopping briefly so we can take some photos of this incredible ostrich from onboard the truck.
After several hours driving through the stunning dunes of this part of the Namib desert, we arrive in Solitaire, one of the smallest official towns in the world. It feels like something out of the wild wild west, just with an excellent apple crisp type pastry to go with it. I resist it first and wander taking some photos of this picturesque tiny town which boasts a hotel, a gas station, a restaurant, a small shop and a bakery. Back in the bakery I see people chowing down on the apple pastry and can’t resist anymore, ordering one and wishing I had time to eat more than one.
We drive on for a few more hours covering more desert and gradually ascending into some higher ground before eventually turning off of the highway onto a very bumpy road. Off to the left in the distance we spot a single Zebra and a cry goes up, but we don’t really stop much to everyone’s rage. (It’s understandable because of what we’ll see later but still.) The bumpiness of the road makes a photo hard and below is the best I could do.
We get to our campsite and pitch our tents up on a little platform above a bar and hotel area for those with richer blood. There is a also a small water whole down there. But there’s no electricity and no pool so this is called wild camping though frankly it was perfectly comfortable and quite nice. Once our tents our up we are invited down to a huge open air truck, leaving Honary to make dinner while we meet our guide for the evening safari drive, the incredible Franz, a man with undeniable energy, a quick smile, and a clever mind. He’s one of the best guides I’ve ever had across 50 countries and many years of travel.
We eventually all head off on the bumpy ride up further into the mountains in the open air truck keeping our eyes peeled for animals, and it doesn’t take long before we spot a group of Mountain Zebra (smaller and quarter than their Plains cousins and with stripes all the way across their bellies to.) They are beautiful creatures and I can’t stop taking pictures while watching them interact.
Franz keeps us moving quickly in the truck and we hold on tight as he motors across the rough mountain territory suddenly stopping and point off to the left. There’s Zebras in the distance, but that’s not what he’s indicating as he climbs down out of the truck and tells us too look closely, there’s two ostriches in the mountain plain, and as Franz says and my camera confirms there’s also a bunch of Ostrich chicks with them. This fascinates me, as the babies look like normal birds, yet somehow they grow into a massive beast that is all neck, legs, and feathers.
We keep going and Franz quickly finds us more incredible Zebras to photograph and finally I’m feeling like I’m in the Africa I’ve imagined since I was a little boy. Hundreds of wild zebras on the open plains all around us. We even find a group with a little baby Zebra who looks less sure on it’s feet than it should, but it’s adorable and I love it.
Eventually we come to one of the highest points on the property and Franz stops the truck, inviting us all to get out and climb up the hill to a small sandy outcrop. I climb up quick as I can and am in time to catch another amazing site, a family of Oryx down below us on one of the lower plains complete with a baby, which is a darker brown and lacks it’s parents spectacular horns. They are running and that alone is fascinating to watch, but seeing the baby struggling to keep up and the parents waiting for them, is awesome.
Once they are two distant to photograph I return back to the group and find Franz vividly and dramatically explaining how the salt pans formed, with rivers being cut off by sand pile ups caused by the heavy coastal winds where they are left to slowly evaporate from the sun. It’s clear, fascinating and even includes visual aids in the sand. He also tells us stories of being trained how to survive in the desert, stories of where and how to find water and also manages to catch a tiny lizard which he swears is good to eat, and convinces us all he’s about to eat it raw in front of us before letting it go free at the last second. For real Franz is awesome!
We get back in the truck and keep driving winding down to a valley before heading back up to the mountains trying to make it up to a viewpoint in time for sunset. In the meantime we find a bunch of zebras, who by the way have the biggest asses imaginable, like sir mix a lot would love them, and even pass by one decomposing zebra carcas as the sun starts to set.
We make it to the viewpoint and scramble up the hill but its only in time to catch the last glimmers of the sun. It’s beautiful, especially with the Zebras grazing below us, but can’t compare to the sunrise we started the day with. Wow, it feels like it’s been a week.
We head back in the growing darkness to camp and say a warm goodbye to Franz, thanking him for his amazing energy and some of us tipping him. I hand him a decent tip simply having to much respect for the non stop energy he provided our tired group. Back at camp Honary has cooked us up another gourmet level meal, african food this time with a cabbage coleslaw, a chicken stew, and an insanely delicious peanut based sauce. Yum Yum.
After dinner I’m almost ready for bed but decide to walk down to the bar and small but empty pool for a cold drink before bed. I buy the sprite and head out of the little bar and hear a strange sound, like hooves hitting stone. I peer out into the darkness of the night and realize that there are a few dozen zebras gathered at the small waterhole. I sit and watch them in silence for a long while before heading back to camp and letting the others know. They are fascinating animals, both skittish and aggressive although they all clear out and give space to a single Oryx who eventually shows up for a drink.
Light at the waterhole is sparse and these photos are the best my camera could manage, but watching these animals interact in the darkness of night, sat silently just 20 meters off, is an experience I will never forget, one of many such experiences in this incredible day in Namibia.
Today has been the definite highlight of the tour so far, and it came at the right time as I was beginning to wonder if paying almost 2000 Canadian dollars for 20 days had been worth it, and if i’d made a mistake trying to cover too much ground in too short a time with my 6 weeks in Africa. Today assured me that there are countless incredible places to see, and hard as it may be to believe after hearing about today, the best of this trip is yet to come, and we’ve just gotten started. Check back soon for more.
