Bucking the Sun: the Namib

 The Namib is the oldest desert on earth. In fact the earth in much of this country is freakishly old, Jim speaks of basement rock and seeing exposed strata of this is blowing his mind.   None of that in Alaska.  

But the sand is not from here.  No no.  It is from the Kalahari.  3-5Milllion years ago.  Blew down to the southern ocean, came up on the currents and washed ashore where it was blown inland from the southern tip of Namibia into Angola.   There it has settled in dunes, but also landed on the mountain range and made huge dunes on the mountains itself.  That is the orange sand.  The paler sand is from the alluvial                               Plain (do I sound like a geologist?)All is a national park, the whole shoreline is national park, but is not easily accessed.  There is a big in road at Sesriem and Sossusvlei, where there is tarred road (paved) for 60km and then loose sand and 4x4 access to the end of the road, another 5Km.  If you are used to that sort of driving (or in heavy snow), you know it’s fun and challenging as long as someone with the skills is doing the driving. 

At the end of the road is one of the ‘pans’ flat areas that are dessicated salt pans that are wet when it rains (rarely), and dry otherwise.  Sossusvlei got a fair amount of rain last spring, and there was still water.  And thus birds, jackals, insects.  On the road there’s plenty of Oryx and Steinbok, ostrich.   Lesson 1:  even the desert is quite alive.  Lesson 2:  it gets really hot.  Lesson 3:  If you dessicate wood that once was alive there it will survive as dry husks in a salt pan.  Lesson 4:  The dunes are nothing like I have ever seen before:  these are massive.  The ones close to the road are named or numbered.  Dune 45 is one of the most famous, at the 45th km from the entrance, and is 150meters tall.  Big Daddy and Big Mama flank the end of the road are something more like 300meters tall.  Lesson 5:  loose sand is hard to climb.   Lesson 6:  the desert has many moods and tones of light.  

This entire area is deeply moving.  We rode in at dawn, as the light is the best and the shadow add contrast to the dunes.  I could go on and on about dune shape, but suffice it to say that the wind shapes the dunes and while many dunes move, these at Sossusvlei do not, as the are on top of mountains.  After we ate it was up to climb into Deadvlei, where the trees are 800 years old, dead for over 300 and occupy a baked bleached canvas that has nearly no vegetation.  I was awed.