Sossusvlei

Namibia Part 4

More wide and varied conditions on the dirt roads heading North required a high level of concentration. We were heading along the C19 from Maltahohe to Sesriem the jumping off point to visit Sossusvlei, one of the major tourist attractions.

The gravel road regularly changed from relatively smooth to horrible washboard with large sandy ridges running across the direction of travel. There was no discernible pattern making it almost impossible to predict. Remember that the recommended way of dealing with washboard is to accelerate to roughly 80kph until the suspension “harmonises” with the vibration making progress a lot smoother. Sometimes you have to push up to 100kph to get the desired result.

This is fine until you hit one of the sandy ridges. This sometimes causes “fishtailing” – the bike wriggles in a very unsettling way. There is, of course, another recommended technique for dealing with this – accelerate….and RELAX!

So picture this. You are already charging along at 80KPH when your bike hits sand and starts to wriggle from side to side. Every instinct is telling you to SLOW DOWN but in actual fact you have to RELAX and SPEED UP! The bike then pushes itself through into stability.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to relax your arms and your mind the alarm bells are just too insistent. This is my excuse for throwing the bike and me down the road – it was the most scary tank slapper (when the bars bang violently from lock to lock) I have ever experienced. I have no clear memory of the precise cause or of trying to apply the correct technique, only of saying “shit…shit…” several times before landing with a thump. After picking up me and the bike, I paced out 100 steps from where it started.

Still, no real damage done to flesh or machinery, so after pausing to drink some water I got back on and joined Andrew who was waiting up ahead at the left turn onto the C27 to Sesriem. We pulled into the rest stop, refuelled, and decided to sit in the shade while eating freshly made sandwiches from the bakery – an exorbitant tourist price of £1 each.

A BMW F800GS pulled into refuel and the rider came over to introduce himself straight away. Hennie had come up from Cape Town on his long planned solo tour of Namibia and Botswana. It seemed natural to team up and we quickly managed to get rooms at the very swish Sossusvlei Lodge at a very good discounted rate.

While trying not to feel too smug about sitting with our fellow, mostly European, diners who had clearly all paid significant sums to be on their dream African holiday while we had paid £50 each, we discussed the pros and cons of taking the expensive guided tour (£25) instead of hitching a lift up to the famous sand dunes. Motorcycles are specifically banned. We decided on the tour which meant meeting at 6:30am the next morning where we were introduced to our guides, Eno and Jackson.   

Sossusvlei means an area of plenty or gathering of waters, quite ironic as it sees rain once every 3 or 4 years. It is an area at the end of 65km of tarmac road and 5km of very deep sandy rutted track that saw badly driven 4WD’s getting stuck. Banning motorcycles made a lot of sense. We would never have made it and our floundering would have been a major pain to the guys who knew that the only way to deal with sand is to maintain momentum.

This whole area is under water once every 4 years or so.

Dune 45 - the most photographed.

Our guides were worth the money. They were calm, informative, relaxed and prepared to have a laugh. Through them we learned that the Namib Desert is the oldest in the world and 2,000Km long by 200Km wide. The red sand comes from the Kalahari washed down the Orange River to the Atlantic for wind and current to deposit back in Namibia. There are 950 species of bird in the country and rather bizarrely we were shown a very unimpressed owl sitting in a tree being photographed by gawking tourists.

"Yawn.....when does it get dark?"

Eno gave a compelling account of the life of the sand spider before digging one out of the sand with his bare hands. The female lives for over six months, longer depending on how many males she eats after mating, something which greatly amused the wife of the German couple who were also on our tour. 

But the main attraction is the enormous red sand dunes which are so impressive. Jackson led us all up the narrow crest on one of the few that allow walking before encouraging us to run down the side like giddy children. In the meantime Eno had set up a picnic for us all to enjoy in the shade of an Acacia Tree. We were ready for some grub after our early start and walk up the dune. Very nice it was too!

 Jackson in the background. Hennie at the front - not his best look!

An attempt to give an idea of the scale

Picnic!

We have been a bit longer in Namibia than our distance covered would warrant. As I write we are in a very nice guesthouse in Windhoek. Our intention was to stay no more than 2 nights so that a new rear tyre could be fitted to the CCM and perform an oil change, but we are going to have to stay a bit longer as more work needs to be carried out.

We also got stuck in Keetmanshoop far longer than intended due to organising all the logistics around James going back to the UK. Life on the road wasn’t for him.

Our plan now is to head further North, take in the Etosha National Park then head along the Caprivi Strip towards Zambia and the Victoria Falls.