19th. One post, 4 images

17th August. Solitaire
I had to start a blog from Solitaire. It is exactly as the name suggests: a lonely bleak wind swept outpost on the edge of the Namib Desert. The town consists of a servo, a lodge, a camp site and a small shop. The shop has found an interesting gimmick; it makes fantastic apple pies and sells about 200 big slices of the pie a day. Everybody who passes comes in for one. The wind blew gale force all night with a chill to go with it. But it is situated in a spectacular setting with flat land falling away to desert sand surrounded by low mountains that were red with the setting sun on our arrival last night. The camp site is exposed, a braai was out of the question but we were very comfortable in the van eating our chicken curry. Before going to bed we noticed a partial lunar eclipse was occurring.
Today we drive a few kilometres to the red desert sands at Sossusvlei. It is another highlight of this country.
Coming down to the desert yesterday we travelled over a mountain pass that had a very steep decline on the western side. Trucks, caravans and trailers are banned from using it. Part of the steepest sections were cobbled with a roughened surface for cars to get a grip. The view from the top was most impressive and difficult to catch the panorama in a photo.
19th East of Hehnringhausen
The thing with these dunes at Sossulvlei is to be amongst them at dawn. But the entrance to the park gate is 62 kms away at Sesriem and a secondary gate doesn’t open to 5.30. There is an outer gate that opens at 6.30. They have placed the park camp site in between these two gates so those staying on the park camp site have an hour up on those camped outside. But the catch is they charge N$600 (AU$85) for 2 persons to stay at their camp site whereas the normal price to camp is in the $10-20 range. It’s a rip off which is annoying but then a guess it’s a bit like Uluru where they charge an exorbitant price as well.
The dunes at dawn were impressive. A continuous flow of these mountainous dunes with the highest about 300 metres above the surrounding plain. They are a brilliant orange/red in colour and with the early light they literary lit up. We climbed one of them to get a better view. A slow task though by walking along the crest the slope was not too strenuous. I hope the panorama shot on the blog does it justice.
We headed south/east from Sesriem, we were thinking of camping out for the night then came upon this quiet camp ground not far off the road. Woken this morning by a myriad bird calls, very nice.