KalahariLog

Swakopmund is a very interesting town: it's a beach resort, officially in the tropics, but the weather there is more like San Francisco than Miami. It never gets hotter than 25C (77F) and it rains about as much as in the Namib desert, which means that it doesn't rain for years. The morning fog is a feature that keeps some greenery alive, but most of the things that thrive are lichens. Sand and sand-dunes surround the town, which has a ginger-bread cookie house center with trendy shops and coffee shops. There are also some genuine 19th century German houses with peaked roofs that give the town a strange Las Vegas feel, as they seem so out of place.

Swakopmund is the gateway to the Skeleton Coast, a region of about 1000km on the Atlantic where the cold Benguela ocean current meets the hot desert. The ocean waters are very rough and the water temperature is very low, resulting in many ship-wrecks with very few survivals, hence the name of the area. The 2-3 km band along the beach is cold enough to support giant seal colonies like the one we visited at Cape Cross. This colony has upwards of 50,000 seals; most of them were there to greet us when we got there. The noise was surprisingly loud with the baby seals sounding more like lambs than anything else. The smell was quite overpowering too. We saw one black-backed jackal strolling along and there were countless tracks of hyenas, and other scavengers in the area.

Lichens abound in the area near the water. They are not easy to spot, unless you've been told they are there. The land looks barren and empty; there are huge sandy stretches, some rocky patches, and black moonscapes. However, if one peers closely at the ground it turns out that there are lots of living things on a tiny scale. We saw at least a dozen different lichens there: green and leafy ones, silver mold-like ones, orange tube-like ones, and red balloon-like ones. They all survive on the moisture provided by the fog and take hundreds of years to grow. The tracks of an ox cart driven over 100 years ago can be seen in a section of orange-brown lichens: they still haven't recovered the ground in the area where the wheels went.

The fog itself was quite impressive. On Wednesday morning we went for a run along the beach and the visibility was down to a few meters. Sunlight was very low and it took until noon for the first rays to reach the ground. Often the fog doesn't clear all day. In most areas the fog only extends a few kilometers inland, but occasionally it can reach 50-60km. Despite this, Swakopmund and nearby Walvis Bay and Long Beach are thriving summer destinations for Namibians and tourists alike. The construction boom reminded me very much of a city like Phoenix, where vast tracks of land are quickly converted into housing. There are many real estate agencies and plenty of "Land for Sale" signs on the outskirts.

Walvis Bay is 30km south of Swakopmund and provides the only natural deep-water harbour for thousands of kilometers in either direction. Whales and shipping companies appreciate the area. The port's significance explains why it took 4 years longer for South Africa to finally give it back to Namibia even after the rest of Namibia got its indepence in 1990. The town is less exciting than Swakopmund but there is a lagoon which attracts birds of all kinds to the area. When the pans in the Namib or Kalahari desert fill up with water, the flamingos flock there in the hundreds of thousands. But more often than not there is no water in the pans and in these years places like the Walvis Bay lagoon get most of the flamingos.

Also nearby is a famous Namib desert site: Dune 7. It is one of the larger ones in the area and very popular with locals and tourists as it has some picnic facilities and there is no charge to go there or to climb the dune. We got there an hour before sunset, which gave us enough time to climb up, find a quiet spot and watch the sunset. Apparently, a local company offers dune boarding, quad-biking, and other "dune activities" but mercifully there was none of that while we were there. This was a good preparation for our next destination, Sossusvlei, which is probably one of the two most famous places in Namibia, the other being Etosha national park in the north of the country.

It took us another six hours of driving on dirt roads on Friday to cover the 400km distance to Sossuvlei from Swakopmund. The drive was spectacular with changing desert scenery, mountain passes, and surprising number of animals. There were guinea fowl, korhans, ostriches, oryxes, springboks, and lots of lizards. We even saw a family of the elusive Hartmann's Mountain Zebra. They are stockier than the much more common Burchell's Zebra, better adapted to dry and mountainous terrains, and excellent climbers. They can be easily told apart by the striped legs (the common Zebra has stripes on the body and head but not on the legs). Soon after seeing the zebras we came across a car accident: a big 4WD SUV had flipped over on the side of the road. Fortunately, the driver and passenger were alive and well, with just a few small scratches and scrapes. We drove them and their luggage to the next town over.


Near the lodge we were going to stay we were greeted by a welcoming committee of springboks. Last year was a really wet one in Southern Africa. This resulted in a lot of vegetation in both the Kalahari and Namib deserts. Vast tracks of typically barren and sandy regions were covered with grass which a year and a half later has turned into hay and provides sustenance to larger numbers of antelopes than usual. While in Botswana impalas seem to dominate the Kalahari, in Namibia we mostly saw springboks. Both are equally skittish and it was a rare treat for us to get this close. The springbok is a bit of an Apartheid symbol as it was the name for the South African sports teams. Now only the (Afrikaner dominated) rugly team is called the springboks, and Nelson Mandela helped preserve the name.

The Sossusvlei Mountain Lodge was the only fancy place that we booked on this trip. Until that point we stayed in B&B's, but we spoilt ourselves for the last couple of days. The lodge is small, with only ten striking stone-and-glass two-person chalets and a smallish main building where meals took place. The location, views, food, and service were better than any other place we've been to. While most lodges in this part of the world are focused on safaris, game drives, and seen-it-all world travelers' forced conversations at meal times, this place is different. There are morning and evening drives but the goal is to get closer to the dunes and seeing an occasional jackal, or oryx is just an added bonus.

At five in the morning we headed for Sossusvlei (valley at the end of the river). This is a valley on the east end of the dune sea where a river flowing down from the nearby Nakluft mountains runs just under the surface. As a result there is more vegetation in this area. When the river changes its course it leaves dead acacia trees behind. The ones in Deadvlei are supposed to be 800-900 years old. The dunes at sunrise take on all shades of red, pink, and orange. Pictures don't do the place justice.