so, its complicated, but let me explain how this part of the namib-naukluft np works. the gate to the park opens at 6:15am and closes at 7pm. note also the sun rises at 6:15am and sets at 7pm - one wonders if these times are related. now the complication. it takes 60 mins are so to get from the park entrance to the dunes. the attraction here is an area of dunes very high and at least 100km in any direction. this part of the park features a 60km+ narrow valley that runs, dead flat, east-west into the dunes. the dunes are numbered from 1 to 60-ish starting at the ne corner (the valley entrance) and counting counter clockwise. the paved road finishes some 4km short and continues west as a soft deep sandy track to the end of the valley at a place called sossussvlei (vlei means lake and sossus means burnt feet). vlei is usually very dry lake bed although Geoff has seen this one flooded. the deep sand track can be navigated by 4wd vehicles, 2wd more than we have. for folks like us there is a taxi service. local dudes run 4wd drive regularly over this last 4km of scalding hot sand starting at 5:30am finishing at 5pm. thats odd, you say, the park entrance 60km away doesnt open till 6:15am. so here's the deal, a few lodges are inside the park, ours being one of them (clever Geoff) and neednt worry about gates, open or closed. so everythings good, right? well no because if you have a two wheel drive and you have an interest in photography them you want to be at the end of the valley at sunset. ie after the taxis have stopped.
big deal, you say, seen one dune, seen 'em all. but no no no, i forgot to mention that 1.1km south of sossussvlei is deadvlei another lake bed silently inhabited by dead trees revealed to have died 800 hundred years ago. well, you've got to see those right? and at sunset, of course.
so we drove to the end of the paved section, took the taxi one way in.
attempted to climb the dune at sossussvlei. good for james and geoff as someone told them wearing sandals was idiotic when the sand can burn your soles off. "how would you like those done, sir?" i made a noble effort before a pragmatic retreat. maybe an hour later things would be cooler. no not really. so after waiting under a tree for a boring hour we started south through deep scalding hot sand for deadvlei, knowing full well that the last taxi would be long gone before we got the returning 1.1km done followed by the 3.5km back over the taxi route to our 2wd. (about 6km in soft near melting hot sand - note to self, what temp does sand melt anyway. i now know what temp human skin burns at)
a word about dieing of thirst. perhaps it is james and my shared interest in endurance racing or tim sheeper's liquid intake rules (1L/1hr under heavy load) but we were seriously under watered before heading in to this mission. embarrassingly so.
geoff won "best line of trip" with "i always feel really good on the day following nearly dieing of thirst" - no kidding. should mention that i held off my appreciation of this line until i felt confident that i had my own survival locked in.
it was worth it.
here's the bigger picture of deadvlei (if its a lake bed why does it distictly slope from right to left)
and the individual "models" (warning hallucination likely - but water would have fixed that)
i had a whole bunch of things to do this evening but as i was fully engaged filling bottles and drinking water there really was no time left for anything else.
this thing could have been ugly!
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Location:sossusvlei, sesriem, namibia
