Sossusvlei

We left our guesthouse at Maltahöhe after a leisurely breakfast. Our route to Sessriem left the tarmac road for unmade, gravel roads. This started well enough, but became increasingly rutted and uneven – still passable by our small, two-wheel drive car, but increasingly uncomfortable. We were glad when we reached our campsite at Sessriem 3-4 hours later.

As the best time to visit Sossusvlei is at dawn we settled down for a relaxing afternoon with a dip in the pool at reading our books. Our pitch was quite luxurious with a covered patio and en-suite bathroom; definitely glamping!

We arrived at the park gate at 6am the next morning, after a quick breakfast, and set off for Dune 45. It’s so called because it’s 45km from the park entrance. Luckily the road inside the park is tarmac, much to our relief from yesterday’s drive.

We arrived at Dune 45 amongst a crowd of other tourists. We set off in the line up the soft, sandy ridge. It wasn’t too arduous underfoot, mostly the depressions of other’s footprints held firm if you followed them. the 

The views were amazing; the crisp, sharp lines of the orange dunes against the colbalt blue sky. 

From the ridge we descended off the side, our legs sinking into the sand (much like when in deep snow) and traversed along the foot of the dune back to the car. Then we continued onto Sossusvlei. Well we continued to the two-wheel drive car park at least. From there we caught a shuttle in a four-wheel drive vehicle, our car definitely wouldn’t have made it through the tracks of deep sand.

Here we climbed up Big Daddy (325m), the area’s tallest dune. The route felt much the same as Dune 45, but as it wound on the number of people thinned as they decided they’d had enough. We saw a few beetles and small lizards but apart from them it was pretty devoid of life.

At the top, with a small group of others, we had a grand view over the desert below. Now we had to descend. The most popular route was straight off the sheer side, plunging into the sand. Great fun! You can just make the smooth runway in the picture below, and if you look even closer the speck of a person about a third of the way down.

Here we hit the dry, white mud of Deadvlei and walked across to the petrified trees in the distance.

Then we caught the shuttle back to the car, and back to our campsite for another relaxing afternoon, after a long, energetic morning.