Namibia Part Two - The Dunes

During our second week in Namibia we have been pretty energetic. On our way south from Swakopmund we stopped at Dune 7 for a warm up slog up the dune then a run down it. This was a taste of things to come, but first we headed to Naukluft National Park. We walked two day hikes, the Olive and Waterkloof Trails, both of which were pretty rough tracks in similar terrain to the area around Alice Springs in Australia, small spiky bushes, rocky outcrops and canyons and not much water... except for an amazing waterhole below a waterfall which we had a nice dip in.

Finally we headed to Namibia's no. 1 tourist spot, the dunes at Sossusvlei. Here are some of the largest sand dunes in the world. Dune 45 is the best known, where you can share the dune experience with hundreds of marouding overlanders. However there are hundreds of other bigger dunes where you can break trail along picture perfect mountain crests of red sand. We did both and then some, mainly because they were stunning and reminded us of mountaineering the stunning ridge of Mt Alymer in NZ.

A total of 4 dunes in 40 hours.

First up was an unnamed dune above hidden vlei (a flat salt pan scattered with dead trees) which we hiked for sunset, marking our ascent with fresh tracks. The following day we hiked up Dune 45 with the masses and then followed up with a 'virgin' dune bash for sunset on day 2. To top it off we finished with the 'Big Daddy' for sunrise (yes thats its name, reputed to be the tallest in the world?, about 385m from base to top). For this we were chased up the dune by a French tour party who were hot on our heels keen to get to the top for the first ascent of the day. Fair play as they were all in their 40's and pretty darn fit!

We dropped our trashed hire car off today. We covered 3800km in the Corolla, 3600 on dirt, 200km on tar and about 10km of which were on sand! We never got stuck but came closest on a D road near Spitzkoppe where a 150m long deep sandy river bed nearly slowed us to a halt (Lucky Alex was driving!).

Now we are off on a mamoth 23hour bus journey to Cape Town.