Tires 26 - 206: Swakopmund

The Road from Sossusvlei to Walvis Bay is horrible. It is like driving on a corrugated tin roof sprinkled with rubber hungry stones. We counted 180 tire carcasses, most in the first half of the drive until moving through a mountain pass and into the moon landscape. This second half of the drive is simply a white horizon with a road whose edges a scarcely recognizable. Just the thought of being lost out in that nothingness without a compass was be terrifying, so we flew through it en route to the birding Haven that is Walvis Bay.

Solitaire: Evidence of The Vicious Road

Tourist Shot

The White Plain

We did the five cent tour of the industrial town then onto the touristier Swakopmund to our hotel, a place owned by a mean Scottish woman, with washrooms having no door and a glass wall dividing it from the bedroom. Supposedly its all the rave now to make hotels without doors to the washroom. It's unclear who comes up with these raves but pretty soon the chair you watch t.v. on will be a toilet.

We enjoyed wandering the town and somehow became split up. The women seemed to be wandering in and out of shops, while the men, parched from walking and driving through the desert were forced to drink beer at a sidewalk café. We walked the boardwalk that extends into the Atlantic and dined at a windowed corner of an Oceanside restaurant for a cloudy sunset.

The next morning we were loaded into a big Landcruiser with a cast of characters for our excursion to Sandwich Harbor. Our guide is now only remembered as Crocodile Dundee, a barefooted sundrenched German with the likeness of Paul Hogan and a worn leather brimmed hat. There was a computer engineer and his wife. If you have already formed an image of the engineer, go with it, as you probably are on the money, except he was over six feet tall. Then we had the entertaining retired couple from England. Standing next to each other, they looked like the number 10. She wall a tall dame with the likeness of Eleanor Roosevelt and he was a cannon ball in appearance and wit.

We drove first to Walvis Bay, which is the only real shipping port for Namibia. So important was it to shipping that it remained in the hands of South Africa for four years after Namibia gained its Independence. South Africa still hangs onto a huge salt works to keep some money flowing from the former Southwest Africa. It is a rugged town with the poorer settlement at it’s north edge, and nicer blocks of homes sandwiched between the boxy industrial buildings throughout the grid. At the south edge of town is a lagoon that is home to 150,000 birds plus acts as a stopover for an additional 200,000 migrating birds.

We did have a bird book that we were constantly flipping through to try and identify the masses of birds that were feeding in the lagoon. For a while, we did o.k., but it just became too hard to keep up with. We did know, even without the book, that we were often watching flamingoes. The Brits were bird lovers and like two kids in a candy store.

“That’s a speckled so and so!”
“Oooh! Look at the rare black and white such and such!”

At one point in the trip, our group in the back of the Landrover had not heard the name of the rare bird that was swimming amongst the other three thousand. The conversation went something like this.

“What was that? I missed that? What did they see?”
“They saw a bird.”

It must be said that it truly was fascinating to watch so many different types and sizes of birds in the same place in a unique habitat, and we did learn much about migrations, eating habits, and other interesting facts.

Its a . . . bird

But it wasn’t all birds. To get to Sandwich Harbor, we drove along a beach where the tide flows to the foot of a dune, thus requiring good timing and quick pictures to get in and out so the car does not get stranded. Along this beach, we saw seals playing, as well as dead seals that had either washed up from sea or had been attacked by the desert Jackals that come down from the dunes. The coast line was stunning and besides the 4 x 4 tracks that were to be washed away momentarily, completely untouched.

Atlantic En Route to Sandwich Harbor

Sandwich Harbor Parking

From the harbor we hiked back from where we had come while the Landrover was driven quickly past the cutoff of the tide. While enjoying splashing waves on our bare feet, we were surprised by the bounding Crocodile Dundee from the sky down from the dune to direct us the easiest way to climb inland. This was a shock to our cannonball friend who was sucking wind and making witty and self loathing comments of how he was going to die from exhaustion even while on the beach stroll. Madam Roosevelt and Crocodile Dundee did manage to keep him alive and get him up the dunes.

Trying to Beat the Tide

The Living Desert I: Beetle

Crocodile Dundee Smells Trouble

Dunes

The Living Desert II: Nara Fruit

The Living Desert III: Jackal

Inland we had a lasagna lunch and were shown the living desert, where plants grow fruit and water holes are trenched by the Jackals. While demonstrating the deep rumbling sound a specific kind of sand makes as it is pushed down the slope, the cannonball commented that he had thought it “to be flatulence . . . from his wife.”

The Living Desert IV: Springbok

Flamingos

That evening we had another nice meal then retired to our rooms to watch each other use the toilet. The next morning we were to push on, where the roads began to give some pity, to the land of the rare desert adapted elephant, rock art, and rock formations of the Erongo Region.

Tires 1-25: Sossusvlei

Due to the lax requirements of international travel, two more Gerndt’s were allowed to enter the Country of Namibia. Gerry and Donna were picked up by a transfer of the finest bed and breakfast along the Tropic of Capricorn. We drank beer, caught up on life, and did a driving tour of the little capital, then like good hosts, kicked them out to fend for themselves to discover the continent. We will leave it to them to catch you up on their travels in Botswana and Zambia, maybe in a blog called More Cheeseheads in Namibia.

Part 2 of the Africa trip for the Gerndt’s was the road trip with their daughter and son-in-law, which was posthumously entitled 324 Tires. Since we couldn’t play the License Plate game, we started yelling out “Tire” for every shredded piece of rubber we saw in the bush off the gravel roads. Our first day was an eight hour drive to Sossusvlei to experience the red dunes.

“Tire!”
“ How many is that?”
“That was twenty.”
“Do you hear that?”
“Yeah, it’s like a flopping sound.”
“Twenty one.”

So with 20 km to go to our stop, tire 21 was born by the most unassuming stone you’d ever seen, a stone just like the billions of others driven over. In 100 degree heat, the team got her changed in twenty minutes. For the remainder of the 1000 km of the trip, every stone became a suspect.

Tire 21

Rock 1,071,258,003

Sossusvlei is an utterly unique place in the world. It is the eastern most extension of the Namib desert, and as the dunes travel inland, picking up minerals, the sand morphs to its characteristic red. That evening we watched the sunset on the porch of the thatched rooms and spotted springbok. The sunset was fantastic, but Sossusvlei is known more for its sunrise.

Hobbit Sunset

The Gerndts

Whiskey Sky

The following morning we were shuttled 70 or so kilometers into the park as the moon and stars still dominated the sky. Once entering the dunes, the pre-dawn light cast a glow on the riverbed we traveled and the numerous patterned white faces of the desert Oryx. Further in, we came to a stop and were directed up the spine of a long geometric dune in order to see the sunrise 30-minutes off. It did not disappoint.

The clouds were scattered and isolated creating a kaleidoscope of the new light competing with the scenery of cold red sand expanse panorama. We took many photos, said many oohs and ahhs, and simply sat to watch the slowly changing light show. Afterward, we were instructed to take the steep way down to the Dead Vlei salt pan behind us. The group of 20 Chinese men in sports coats slid down on their butts, as did the 70 year old German woman enticed by the giddiness.

Glorius Dune Sunrise

Sossusvlei Red Dunes


Dune Climbers


Dune Climbers II

Dead Vlei is the cul de sac of the Aub and Tsaucheb Rivers, blocked by the boundary of the dunes. During rare flash flood rains, the water fills these pans and evaporates, leaving the characteristic white surface with the texture of hardened clay. At the higher side of the pan, 700+ year old trees have been frozen in time, while at the lower elevation, where the water still floods, desert plants, shrubs and trees seemed to be the only living items. We did see however, a lone Oryx wandering across the pan like a martian horse on the Moon, and later a lonely Ostrich on a red dune like a dinosaur on Mars.

We spent two more hours wandering dunes, the pan, taking pictures of men in sports coats, and testing an African long drop. The afternoon was naps, reading, and buying a tire in the middle of nowhere, an early Christmas gift to the bed and breakfast owners.

Dead Vlei


Dead Trees

Dead Trees II

Dead Trees III


Krysta On "Big Mama" Dune


Dune 45

The road to Sossusvlei was kind, only killing 25 tires. The coming road to Swakopmund would prove to be a massacre. All those little unsuspecting stones were on the hunt.

Just Pictures

NAMIB NAUKLUFT

Kudu

Dry Naukluft River Bed

700 Million Year-Old Naukluft Rock

Social Weaver Bird Nest

Perched Valley

Only Natural Swimming Spring in Namibia

Bird, Eagle, Hawk?

Too Much Sun Bows your Legs




AMANI

Warthog That Tried To Get In Our Car

Cheetah Sees Meat

Cheetahs Eat Meat

Cheetah Satisfied

Cheetah Curious

Leopard Sees Meat

Leopard Finds Meat

Lioness Sees Meat

King Of Jungle Sees Lioness' Meat

King Of Jungle Has Pretty Eyes

Amani Sunset


HAKOS

Moonrise

Sunset