Our route in red:

We bade Klein Aus farewell heading for Sossusvlei continuing on the C13 but back on gravel, on Paul's suggestion then taking a detour along the D707, the Tiras range on our right. This area confirms how deserted the South is - we see nothing other than an occasional white bakkie, a few farmhouses, no other people and a solitary skinny oryx that observes us from higher ground. .

After joining the C27 we stopped at the tiny town of Betta where I bought a few beers. As a rule, drank Windhoek draught in Namibia a crisp beer with no preservatives.

We continued up the C27 with the Nubib mountains to the west until we rolled into the Sossus Oasis camp site in Sesriem, at the gate to the Namib Nauklift Park within which lies Sossusvlei.

We signed on for a camp site with kitchen and bathroom facilities, a treat for us and spent the next day catching up on photos and other stuff. The site has electricity and is a minutes’ walk from the local garage and shop, both with eco-roofs.

There is a computer hut for travellers but it was very hot inside and so we relied on our iPhone hotspot system to see us through. The phone company MTNs coverage throughout the country was not bad with only a few blank spots but sometimes it was too weak to power the Internet.

The following morning we were first at the gate to enter the park driving into the sand sea as the sun rose tinting the dunes pink. We played dodgem with the other cars and buses stopping and passing as we all took photos of the orange and maroon dunes with the darker Tsaris Mountains receding into the distance. A few gemsbok traverse the grass dotted slopes.

We climbed part way up Dune 45 - the legs were complaining 😉.  A relaxing tour guide watched us continue on to Sossusvlei itself where one can park and can catch a ride to the vlei with the local rangers for a fee. If you want to go yourself the last 300 metres is in soft thick sand that required us to deflate the tyres and drive in four wheel drive. We saw one stranded bakkie where the driver had likely slowed down and got bogged.

We walked through the dunes to the white clay-floor pan (vlei) that can fill with water from the Tsauchab River during exceptionally heavy rains. The dunes around the vlei rise up to 350 m above their base (Big Daddy being the highest) and are said to be the highest dunes in the world. From the air they are star shaped. The dead trees dotting the vlei are around 1,000 years old and date back to the time when the Tsauchab flowed prior to the encroaching sands choking it off. 

Once we returned to the parking site I noticed some girls trying to re-inflate their  tyres and so went to help, finding they were medical students from Berlin Uni on an internship trip who had ventured through the sand, having never driven in four wheel drive before. As we returned we dropped in on the Sesriem Canyon just inside the gate where the Tsauchab River has cut its way through conglomerate and sandstone beds forming the canyon.

After another day of downtime (during which I bumped my leg on my camp bed - more about that in the next blog) we set off early for Swakopmund, turning onto the C19 until we reached Solitaire again, where I bought one of their well-known apple pies from the bakery, the weaver population solemnly observing me eat it. Jen photographed the remains of a tyre ripped by sharp stones its carcass discarded unwanted. From there we retraced our tracks from day one on the C14 moving from the Karoo bioregion back into the coastal desert region.

We diverted off at Walvis Bay to look at the flamingos with a few pelicans passing overhead. We noticed how they move their web feet in the mud in the shallow waters stirring up the molluscs, algae, larvae etc. that they eat.

In the next blog we travel north via the well known Spitzkoppe Mountain before moving east to Etosha National Park