Day 36: South to Sossusvlei

Day 36

Today I'm in: Sesriem Village, Namibia

After our Sunday-night exploration through the very deserted streets of Windhoek, we headed out again the next morning to see what the city looked like on a weekday with a little bit more happening.  Fortunately, this time we found a much more lively place, although it still feels pretty small and self-contained.  We wandered the Post Street Mall - a very American-feeling 1990s-style pedestrian mall lined with chain stores that has been taken over by street vendors as well - before grabbing lunch. 

Following lunch, we had to book it back to our hotel to meet our driver for the trip into the Namib Desert.  Our driver was Kassie, a former South African mercenary who now splits his time between Windhoek and Cape Town and was generally talkative and hilarious.  We headed south from Windhoek into the rocky, mountainous, sun-baked countryside that makes up most of Namibia.  It looks like a tough place.  The land is mostly used for cattle ranching as it doesn't really rain enough to grow crops, except in the greener northern strip along the Angolan border.

Just beyond the small town of Rehoboth we turned onto a gravel road for the long three-hour drive to Sossusvlei.  The road itself was actually pretty smooth - according to Kassie it's re-graded about once a month - but long and very monotonous.  We passed a lot of enormous bird nests in trees and on electric wires - these are massive condo-style nests made by a bird whose name I can't remember now but which nests in flocks to conserve cool air in the summer and heat in the winter.  The nests are self-regulating and are usually 10-20 degrees (Celsius!) warmer or cooler in the appropriate season.  

Eventually the road twisted up and over the Spreetshoogte Pass, which is in the mountains separating Namibia's central highlands from the lower Namib Desert.  When we came over the top of the pass the view out across the desert was pretty incredible and really desolate - it really drives home how sparsely populated this country is.  As we descended in very low gear through the pass (still on a gravel road!) we passed a few families of klipspringer, a small antelope with forked hooves that help it jump down mountainsides.  

Finally, after another hour of crossing scrubland, we arrived at the aptly-named Namib Desert Lodge, which is set against a backdrop of petrified red sand dunes where the desert transitions from rocky plains to sand dunes.  The resort, owned by a Namib-German couple, is a series of cottages arranged around a traditional lapa-style restaurant and swimming pool.  The real star attraction and reason for our trip, the dunes of Sossusvlei, were a few more hours away, but that had to wait for the next day.