getting up in the morning heading into the desert watching the sunrise
here's what can happen if a) you don't let your tyres down
b) you don't really know what you're doing
now the people who rented this car are helpfully
pushing while one of the shuttle drivers is helpfully driving them out
the technique wiggling the wheel keeping it steady but not over accelerating it because if you
push too hard on the throttle the car just gets sunk deeper and deeper in
not how you
want to start in the morning but a good bit of exercise I guess
there we go, now he's out of the most sandy patch but he doesn't stop here he's
still not got good traction he's got to keep it going
wiggling that wheel, make it to firmer ground, and now we can go of to and just,
well, take the car
probably just going to stop on some firmer land and pick them up
now you see the other car demonstrating that you can get through quite easily
embarrassing, good job it wasn't me
well here I am in the Namib Desert and to get here
well not specifically here, but this morning's routine to see the Namib
Desert was like this I woke up at 5:00 a.m. 5:00 a.m. it was dark it was cold I
was in bed I was comfy but if you want to go in and catch sunrise in the desert
you've got to get up early so 5 a.m. rise it was packed away the sleeping
bags packed away the roof tent had a quick breakfast that I prepared before (yesterday)
then had a drink and drove into the desert so I trundled in there
dark half asleep
obviously carefully watching where I'm
going there was an Oryx ran across the road right in front of me it was really
beautiful, was a bit scary it woke me up a little bit then you park the car
then there's a little hut it's like now 6 - 6:10 in the morning it's a very
cheerful lady in the house selling tickets to the four by fours that then
transfer you from the two by four car park to the four by four through a
thick sandy patch
now if you're got a four by four you can drive it if you
want but a lot of people get stuck because if you don't know what you're doing don't
let your tyres down and all that so it's 150 Namibian dollars and that's to
transfer there and back and these shuttles run between the 2 by 4 and the
4 by 4 car park which is just outside sossusvlei itself
big sand dune and they run all day about every 15 minutes they shuttle backward
and forward about eight of these shuttles go round and round and round just up and
down and these guys have got super low tyres so they trundle through, ten people can
go on there but there doesn't need to be full and basically go back and down all
the time
and these drivers, well they must be good at driving in sand
they drive this every day
how many times do you do
this trip every day every day
every day here more than 50 or 60 times a day
but you never get stuck
no no no no
so hopped on that got on there
got to the 4x4 car park hopped off there and then went and climbed a sand dune
and watched the sunrise over the desert and that is what people come to Sossusvlei for
and then you suddenly see all these sand dunes you've been driving through
before you can suddenly see them because you're driving in the dark before and
you're in the middle of the desert suddenly you wake up light comes up and
yes beautiful colours as it changes on the sand and you see all the beautiful
curves of the different sand dunes you can climb up as high as you like there's
some pretty big sand dunes there I think the biggest one that you can climb is
about 350 meters high climbing in sand is a lot more difficult if anybody's
walked on the beach you know difficut it's a walk on soft sand well then put
that in a huge pile 300 meters high and start climbing on it it's a lot tougher
than it looks so you're best getting rid of your shoes I mean shoes because the
sand goes in everything so your flip-flops or kickoff your shoes climb up quite a task
and then made my way back on the way back there's a dune called dune 45
which is 45 kilometres from Sesriem very original hey? and it's a bit it's a bit of
a strange sand dune because it's a barchan dune (which is a type of due) that stands
alone it's not linked to other sand dunes which most barchan sand dunes are so
this sand dune is he big sand dune I think a hundred and thirty meters high moves
moves something like 20 meters a year as the wind blows it backwards and forwards
it's a very beautiful looking sand dune because it's so well defined and so separate
from the others you can actually see a whole sand dune so I stopped there on the
way back as well has alittle climb up there light was still nice for me
now I'm heading back to camp to get some well-deserved rest because getting up at 5 a.m. now
not really having a proper breakfast I stopped here had some more breakfast on the way back
now I'm going to go back and have something to eat
now what I might do
instead of actually bothering to cook for myself because it's hot and I
don't want to get the fire out
I'm going to drive to solitaire which is about 76 km back over the road towards
Swakopmund and Windhoek I took yesterday but there's a particularly
good bakery, there's a bakery, a very good bakery, a very famous bakery it does have
very good apple pie or apple crumble apple crumble but I was thinking I can
pick up either a meal there or some rolls to go with the chicken I cooked
yesterday I'm going to go investigate solitaire there's a garage a curio
shop bakery and I'll go and see what that's all about
in the meantime
enjoy the desert