9/9/19
After so much excitement and a sleepless night, I slept like a log – or slept like a rock as has become our new saying after our outdoor sleeping experience! In fact we all did, so much that no one heard poor Sarah being sick during the night. In the morning, we headed to the breakfast area and grabbed some eggs and bacon to get us ready for the morning exercise. With that we were even able to convince Mark and Lizzy to join us for a morning of fun, replacing Sarah who chose – and wisely so – to sleep off the morning rather than join us in our latest stupid idea.
At 9:30, 13 of us headed out into the Namib Desert on the outskirts of Swakopmund, pumped and excited for yet another dumb way to test our mortality. This time, we’d chosen sand-boarding as our method of death. The concept is simple really: you climb up to the top of the sand dune, and then you slide back down. Some of the group went for the stand-up version, where you get a snowboard and do your thing trying not to roll over too much and hopefully land some jumps.
The rest of us less coordinated folks went with the lying down version. Essentially you get a wooden board to slide down, head first, as fast as you can. Sound stupid enough? Yep! The description of the board capabilities included the lack of breaks, the lack of steering, and the lack of windshield. Essentially keep heading straight, do not steer at all, just let the dunes take you where they want or you wipeout. And break with the feet – if at all – and scream with your mouth closed unless you want sand for lunch!
We were armed with a helmet and elbow pads, given a board and then pointed up the dune. Wow that is hard! I knew walking in sand offered resistance, but this was so much more than I had prepared myself for. Getting to the top of that dune was absolutely exhausting, and when you add sand blowing in your face in the process, it makes for quite a difficult climb.
Once at the top of the dune, we were offered some cups of water – the sand really adds a nice crunch to it! – and handed freshly waxed boards to each of us. I decided the shoes had been a terribly bad idea, making the climbing that much more difficult, and took them off. Let’s get breaking in the super hot sand bare foot!
We were shown once how to get down the dune, and then it was our turn! Knees on the edge of the board, grab the front and lift it up, elbows out, and DON’T STEER! I’d like to thank my pilates instructor for the “superman pose” – basically lifting the upper body and legs up straight, using only the back muscles. It worked absolutely perfect for the aerodynamics required to get maximum speed sliding down.
I had been sure I would be breaking the entire way down from fear of speed, but in the end the rush of sliding down as fast as possible was too much to resist! The first dune even had a guy at the bottom standing with a speed gun to measure our speed. And I managed the top speed for the day on this dune, at 45km/h. Freaking epic!
The only downside of sliding down the dunes was that each time you got to the bottom, you had to climb back up… Even when walking in the footprints already made in the sand, the experience was exhausting and goodness knows I could feel my calves and bum by the end of the day! And of course we were completely covered in sand. Head to toe and everywhere in between!
On occasion we would take a break in between dunes – more specifically climbs – to watch the stand-up boarders while our guides re-waxed our boards. Nothing more satisfying than watching someone take a jump off the platform and face-plant the sand on their landing! All in good fun of course.
One of our dunes was done in tandem, so Katie and I went down first. Her sitting in front holding the front end of the board up, me in the back with my hands in the sand to steer the board around. And down we slid like lunatics, with no idea of the direction to take and minimal control over our high-speed engine. Fantastic!
On another dune, the stand-up boarders were also given a chance to slide down lying down and compete for the highest speed. This course included a good dip which, when taken at high speed, resulted in a bit of a jump – and rough landing! – only to then finish on a bumpy track. With my 63km/h, the bumpy arrival meant I am probably now infertile, but oh so well worth it!
I maintained the top speed record on this dune as well for the first run through, but Michael was determined to win this one. Personally, I was determined not to climb the damn dune again! So down he went with absolutely no breaking just hoping for the best, and he managed a 69km/h. Not good enough, down he went again this time being launched wheelbarrow-style by the guide to reach 70km/h on this one. I happily concede defeat here: I was done with the climbing!
Our final dune was one crazy dip, followed by a second smaller dune if you went fast enough to catch it. I was so keen on carrying it through, but alas my board began to spiral meaning I had to tap the ground several times to straighten it, making me slow down and just miss the second dune. Michael didn’t waste any time though, threw reason out the window and flew down the second hill, probably reaching about 90km/h according to our guide.
We returned to the cars and ferociously attacked the eski with drinks, downing can after can from exhaustion. The organisers pulled out some sandwiches as well which went down wonderfully. Climbing sand dunes opens the appetite! We then called it a day and returned to our accommodation where I proceeded to empty my pockets which were carrying probably about half of the Namib desert. The other half was in my ears, nose and places I won’t mention, so I think I earned myself a nice long shower!
We decided to spend the afternoon walking around Swakopmund and looking for a nice coffee place. Swakopmund is an interesting town, resembling the large American country towns in my opinion. Large roads, a lot of pick-ups and SUV’s and shops everywhere with few locals. Still, we found our coffee shop and indulged ourselves in real beans instead of instant coffee – magical! – before grabbing some ice cream and doing a last shopping round for snacks.
Once back at our hotel, we were rejoined by Steven – our camera guy for the day – who had put together a slideshow of pictures and a fully edited video of the day. It took over half an hour to go through, but oh so worth it! Seeing the crash landings and wipeouts in high definition on a large screen made our day and we once again made a great impression on the other residents as we cheered each face-plant on screen!
After the videos, we replayed our skydiving videos for Mark and Lizzy who had missed the viewing yesterday, and then headed out to dinner. The 9 of us opted for a nice looking German pub where I picked out what I believe may well be the most beautiful piece of fish I have ever eaten. Then it was back to the dorm room, a quick repacking of the bag and crashing out on the bed ready to leave Swakopmund in the morning.
10/9/19
We were rewarded this morning with the latest departure time of the whole trip: 10:00! Of course after almost 2 months of early morning starts, my body clock didn’t particularly care about how late it was, and thus I was well awake by 7:00. Not such a bad thing, since I managed to get breakfast, type up some more diary and even make a run to the ATM.
Justin went out desperately looking for bananas in the morning, so we left camp a little bit delayed, but made good time on our drive. This part of Namibia is even dryer than when we were near the Botswana border. The landscape is basically nothing but sand, sand dunes, rocks and more sand. At times we passed some mountains of solid dry rock, and then back to more sand.
Unfortunately this means no bushes for bushy bush, as there is one small tree every 15km, and shrubs reach no higher than about 30cm. So bushy bush became sandy sand, with the girls taking turns to squat behind the truck, waving at the occasional car driving past. Alas, that’s not discreet enough for my liking, and we were right back to a good old psychological blockage!
We had lunch on the side of the road next to one of the solitary trees, with another solid amount of wind. We carried on through towards our destination, with our next stop being the Tropic of Capricorn. It’s surreal to think that not so long ago we were crossing the equator – twice – and the 8 of us were a bit emotional to see how far we had actually travelled all together.
Around 15:30, we made it to our campsite: Sossus-on-foot – affectionately nicknamed sausage-on-foot by the Aussies. It’s basically a campsite in the middle of absolutely nowhere, sand and desert everywhere all around. But a very nice middle of nowhere. The facilities were nice and clean, the bar area was chill but offered cold drinks, and there was even a watering hole where we could observe some oryx’s coming in for a drink. This place also had heaps of leopard-tortoises, cute little things running around the camp area.
We spent an hour or so relaxing at the bar before meeting Franz, our local guide for a desert experience. We basically just hopped in a 4×4 and drove around the desert area, but we learnt so much in the process. Franz showed us flowers that could stay dead for years and revive with the touch of water, he showed us sand and web “trap-doors” used by spiders to trap beetles for their lunch.
The dunes looked beautiful and even more so with the sunset. I kicked off my shoes and made the most of the sand, to hell with spiders and snakes and scorpions! As soon as the sun went down, the temperature dropped and the sand became cold. But turns out if you dig into the sand a little bit, it’s nice and warm under there. While the dunes are covered by iron particles which can be collected on a magnet.
We returned to camp fairly late, but thankfully dinner was almost ready by then. Given how isolated we were, the stars in the night sky looked absolutely splendid. I don’t think I’ve seen the southern cross so clearly in years. Michael pulled out his camera once again of course, this time to catch a full group photo with the campsite, one last shot as we quickly approach the end of our epic tour.
11/9/19
Our very early morning departure was made slightly easier as Justin decided we would have breakfast directly at our first stop instead of before leaving. So at 4:45, we were all curled up in our sleeping bags and blankets on the truck, catching up on our missed sleep.
Ali punched the accelerator on the gravel roads so much that we arrived well in advance to the National Park. In the end we sat in front of the gates about 20 minutes before being let through to continue our drive. Needless to say we mostly slept through all of this, past all the dunes barely visible in the rising sunlight.
Finally we reached our destination: Dune 45. The National Park has hundreds of dunes formed all over, of which this particular dune is the most famous and most photographed of Namibia. So it makes total sense that rather than just sit there to admire the view, we would decide to climb to the top of the thing…
After the repeated dune climbing from our experience at sand-boarding, I had been sure I would decide to stay at the foot of the sandy formation to just look. And yet so early in the morning, before breakfast, I decided it wasn’t too hot and the dune wasn’t too high. So up I went with the majority of the group, while Justin stayed back to make us a breakfast for heroes.
The sand was quite cold on the way up, but I’d learned from my experience and went up barefoot, holding my thongs in my hand to simplify the climb. In the end it wasn’t nearly as tough as I had anticipated, no doubt thanks to the cool temperature. The main challenges came each time we had to cross paths with another tourist heading back down the dune. Whichever one of us moving out of the way found himself sinking almost knee-deep into the sand, which naturally requires even more energy to climb back to the path of footprints.
But soon enough I had made it to the top of Dune 45, overlooking the rest of the park’s dunes all around. By this point the sun was coming out just enough to warm us up but not yet hitting the scorching degrees we could expect in the middle of a desert. We took a few photos all over, proud of our achievement and then progressively started our way back down to the breakfast.
As I descended via the main path with Kerrianne, a few people were veering off-course and high legging it down the slopes of the dunes. When Brenton made it to the bottom like such without toppling over, he started to call us down as well. I had just tripped to avoid a tourist and ended up straddling the dune – entertaining sight but still – so we decided to risk it and leg it down as well. Sinking down to our knees, leaning way back to avoid falling, and doing a proper Baywatch run all the way down. Turns out it was a lot of fun!
We had our breakfast and then hopped back on the truck to continue our journey through the dune park. We stopped a little further on where all the other tourist trucks were also stopped – and with nice bathrooms! – to swap to smaller 4×4 cars. These took us through the sandy road all the way to the tallest dune of the park: Big Daddy.
I’m not sure of the exact height of this dune, but I understand it is about twice the height of Dune 45. By this point I had well decided I had climbed enough dunes for one trip and that the view was not worth the effort required to get it. So while half our group decided to tackle the climb, the rest of us wondered around the “Small Flay”.
This area used to be a riverbed once upon a time, joining all the way to the ocean. But as years passed, wind and sand would get in the way creating massive dunes in the way and blocking the river further up. The process is still ongoing today, with new dunes slowly forming up-river and progressively blocking the water flow. The result: a completely dead and dry landscape, but for the standing Acacia trees which can stay green for several hundred years after death.
We climbed the smaller hills of sand to get some beautiful shots of the area, before returning to the car area to wait for our friends to return from their digestive morning walk. A couple of people returned in advance to the truck, but I stayed behind to welcome the walkers open armed – and with bottles of water!
In total they took about 2 hours to get to the top of the dune, run back down and cross the deserted salt pan area we had walked up to. Including a multitude of photo breaks, I’d say their time was fairly impressive! Once back, we joined the queue of people waiting for 4×4’s to take them back to the main truck area, and finally got back. I had checked out the bathroom situation at the Small Flay, and had been convinced very easily to just hold it in because nothing was worth that! So when we finally got to the truck, we dropped everything and made a mad-toilet-dash before heading off again.
Ali stopped the truck once we made it to a campsite at the other gate of the National Park. Here we pulled out our food items and went about making some sandwiches for a late lunch. We also picked up a couple of cold drinks for the road, and before long we were off again through the sand, dunes and rocky mountains to our campsite.
We got to the campsite around 16:00 or so, and immediately rushed to the pool to dip our sandy, beaten and dried-up feet into the freezing water. Once this is over, I think I’ll need to book a solid pedicure to counteract the effect the desert has had on me! We then put up our tents, I showered and did my laundry, and we grabbed a drink at the bar quickly before heading back for dinner.
The view of the sunset over the mountains was beautiful and well-worth braving the cold temperatures that were quickly settling in once again. Damn deserts. For the fun anecdote of the day: I saw one of the campsite dogs walking around our tents in the dark and called out to him to come get a pat. No response from the dog, so I stopped whistling, and watched with surprise and a bit of horror as the shape turned around and ran off, with long bat-like ears and a fluffy tail. Yep, I was calling out to a jackal… Smart move!
Elodie's Travel Diary 