WAVES OF SAND AND SEA

Swakopmund, 5 December 2001

Now that I've just started rewriting everything I'd written at the Fish River Canyon I can begin with the stuff that I really want to write. We decided to head down to Luderitz, just because we could, taking most of the day to get there and stopping to stand in the bed of the Fish River about 100 km north of Hobas where it is only 5 m deep and makes you wonder about the power of water - that it can scour a canyon so deep in such a short stretch while flowing so seldom.
The nature of the landscape changes abruptly after Aus as the road crests the mountain range and begin a long slide down to the coast. We measured it all on our way back up from Luderitz the next day - using our fancy GPS toy, just cos we can! - and found that in the 130 km from Luderitz to Aus, the road rises about 1500 m. When you're on the road, it doesn't feel like you're climbing that much, we just thought the truck was taking strain in the wind. It was only the last 10 km that felt like we were going uphill, as we climbed over the mountain range itself.
You come over the rise and there is a sea of yellow grass covering the sandy plain and sliding up the sides of red dunes and dark rock alike. I know it sounds cliched, but it really does look like a giant body of water and it's difficult to avoid comparisons.
A little further on there is a sign indicating a turnoff to a hide from which to watch the Garub wild horses, but we saw them from the highway as they grazed and mingled with Oryx about 300 m from the equivalent of a national road.

Luderitz
Getting into Luderitz is a battle of note, with strong south-easterly winds buffeting Wag 'n Bietjie and sand blowing across the road so hard that at places drifts form across the road as the dunes move across. While the drifts don't look to serious, hitting even a small one at any sort of speed is worse than trying to get over a Gauteng speed hump. Hitting one at high speed is enough to send the car straight off the road and the holiday into the annals of "the worst ever ...".
Getting into town wasn't too bad, but on the way out there was a drift deep enough that even though we slowed down and changed into second gear to give us enough oomph to get through, was still hit the sand and stopped, dead in the middle of the road. It's great having four-wheel drive and doing most of the driving - I get to sit in comfort while co-pilot Lisa has to get out and run around the car into the sand blast to lock the hubs so that we can churn through the mess. She also had to get out to unlock the hubs, a fact that made me even happier about doing the driving.
And frankly, after all that effort, the town was worth the effort or trip. The Kolmanskop mining ghost town, famous for being a sand-blasted white elephant in the middle of the desert, can be seen from the road into town and isn't that spectacular. It was abandoned in the early part of this century when richer diamond deposits were discovered at Oranjemund further south.
Luderitz itself is quaint, with lots of Germanic architectural styling in the houses which look like they have just been plonked down on the bare rock - no attempt at leveling the ground or creating a flat platform for the house and surrounds. Clearly the status symbol of note in Luderitz, as it appears to be here in Swakopmund, is to have a lawn rather than a freshly raked-sand patch.
We stayed on Shark Island, which is a misnomer on both counts. The place would have better served if they had named it Wind Tunnel - but then I suppose people wouldn't bother staying there. What was worth the drive was the trip down to Diaz Point, where Bartholomew Diaz erected a stone cross in 1488 on his way back from being the first European to round the tip of Africa and open the sea route to the East.

Environmental trashing
Why he would want to erect a cross at such a desolate spot is rather strange but there it stands in the middle of the desert - which is ringed with warnings not to stray off the road because it's diamond area and you might just find a diamond lying on the sand and be led into temptation and become a prospector. Alternatively, and this is probably the more important reason, you might discover just how savage the diamond companies' strip mining practices are and how little environmental concerns are treated.
Certainly, from what we've seen of the tourism industry, environmental issues fall into the category of foul language, with tourists and tour operators alike pretending as though nothing will ever destroy this country's truly awesome landscapes. The last 50 km or so of road into Walvis Bay, through the Namib-Naukluft Park, is scarred with the tracks of innumerable vehicles which have just headed off the road to scour their way through the desert. While they are worried about me having a dog in the park, the authorities don't seem to give a faerie's turd about protecting the area from idiotic tourists.
Enough ranting and back to Luderitz. From the site of Diaz's cross you can look down on a small island about 100 m offshore with a colony of seals. There were a lot of pups lounging in the sun when we were there, although the colony is really small when compared with the one at Cape Cross, near Henties Bay north of Swakopmund. That one has something like 100 000 seals grunting and mewling as they fight for a spot to sunbathe in.

Moonshine
We did some shopping, played some pool and drank some beer in Luderitz before heading inland again later on the Saturday afternoon (We'd thought it was Sunday until somebody in the pub put us right!). After climbing to Aus, we turned north towards Helmeringshausen but pulled off the road about 50 km short of the town and made camp in the middle of a basin of yellow grass ringed with mountains - the basing was about 30 km in diameter and the sense of solitude is stupendous. About 15 minutes after we stopped - just long enough for our eyes to adapt to the dark - the full moon rose, hovering in bright fragility just about the horizon like a soapy bubble from a child's bubble blower. It was really great seeing it - kind of made us realise why we'd come on this trip.
We didn't stop in Helmeringshausen the next morning, it being Sunday and the town being so small we weren't even sure it woke by mid-week! We did stop somewhere halfway between Helmeringshausen and Maltahohe, spending the heat of the day repacking the truck (we're slowly getting things into some sort of manageable order that doesn't require constant unloading to get to anything) while Lisa cooked lunch.
The meat in Namibia is excellent - way, way better than anything you get in Seffrica - and cheap. That though is counterbalanced by most other things being significantly more expensive. At the Fish River Canyon, they wanted almost R20 for a packet of cigarettes.

It's a kind of Magic
We reached Sesriem, the camp closest to Sossusvlei and the Sesriem Canyon, about 6.30 pm and managed to talk our way into a campsite (you're supposed to prebook all these things in Windhoek!) and into being allowed to stay with the dog. (Sorry about that interruption - another fly was irritating me and I had to cull it!) For the first time this trip, we got it right to get up really early - 4.30 am - so that we could drive down to Sossusvlei in time to see the sunrise.
We've been trying to change our sleeping patterns ever since we left Pretoria so that we wake up early and make the most of the day but without much success. The first day we get it right, I decide to check the tyre pressures while Lisa is having a (cold) shower, and find that we have a puncture! Changing the fixing the tyre put paid to sunrise over Sossus.
Instead we went to the Sesriem Canyon at about lunchtime, baked in the confines of the 30 m deep canyon as we marvelled at it and then headed off to Sossusvlei, about 60 km southeast of Sesriem and reached along what must be the strangest stretch of tarred road in any desert, early in the afternoon. We didn't think we'd be there for that long but ended up spending about six hours there and wishing we could spent longer.
I'd always thought the photographs of Sossusvlei and its towering red sand dunes, must have been achieved either through the use of filters or image manipulation packages. When we got there I realised that all the pictures were true, things really do look like that - and the sky is that sharp, dark blue - and I could easily have shot dozens of rolls of film trying to capture the shapes, contours and contrasts of the place.

Animals out here?
At Sossusvlei itself, there was a springbok grazing in the distance and as soon as we stopped - there weren't many people around by then as most of the were looking at Dead Vlei or had gone back to camp already - scores of Cape Sparrows hopped up to the truck as if to say: "Where's our ration of food?" like an Animal Farm tool booth. While we were feeding the birds, several small wild rats (not the savage creatures of Steven King's imagination!) emerged and scuttled out to steal scraps from the birds before darting back to the safety of the bushes to eat them.
As we had started crossing the dunes to see Dead Vlei, traipsing through the sand and watching the Tenebrionid beetles scurrying across the dunes ahead of us like radio-controlled cars on Acid, we saw the track of a snake and following it, found a tiny (less than a foot long and thin as a pencil) yellowish snake trying to blend into one of the small bushes and hide from us. As we approached, it glided off, refusing to pose for a photograph or stick around to fraternise with the monsters who have been stuffing its habitat.
As we were leaving were leaving Sesriem camp en route to Solitaire a park ranger approached us and gave us a lecture about dogs in parks and fines and who is in charge. He was pleasant enough about it but his attitude differed from the really helpful approach of most of the people we'd dealt with until then. Most of the them didn't mind the dog on condition that she didn't bother other people in the camp and that when we went into the park area, she didn't get out of the truck - fair enough considering it is a wildlife area and dogs are typically used for hunting.
We camped alongside the road again just before Solitaire because I was struggling to keep my eyes open after being active and busy for more than 16 hours without a break (I know, it doesn't sound like much but it really is tiring having all this fun!).
Now we're in Swakopmund, staying at a backpackers on the edge of town with the sand dunes only 10 minutes walk away and the centre of town (and the sea) only 15 minutes walk away. We went out for dinner last night and stuffed our faces with fresh veg and somebody else's cooking. It's called the Alternative Space and has a really nice feel to it, with the rooms and style being very different from standard square-roomed buildings. The showers are open air - but it has hot water, something most of our camps haven't had! - and the atmosphere is really relaxed and welcoming. It feels comfortable and isn't full of the usual bunch of overlanders looking for a party and wondering why the fridge isn't stocked with bottled water: "What am I supposed to drink?" they ask as they lean against a tap full of really sweet-tasting Namibian water.
Today is catch-up-and-organise-things day and we'll move on tomorrow. From here, we're heading north towards Spitzkoppe, the Brandberg and then Etosha, but whether we'll get it right to take mutt in there remains to be seen.