Trip to the Namib Desert: Where the Sand glows and the Sky is on Fire.
November 23, 2024
The dark shape on the crest of the dune silhouettes starkly against the evening sky. Four strong legs, a tail, and two horns, both almost a yard long, thin and pointed like spears. An oryx antelope - standing there like a messenger from the gods in “the area where there is nothing.” That is the literal translation for the Nama language term “Namib Desert” in Namibia, Africa.
But despite the seemingly endless orange sand hills, the enormous aridity, the hot winds and the few wiry-looking bushes, there is so much to find here: stardust on earth in the form of trillions of glittering grains of sand, fiery African sunrises and sunsets, animals ranging from tiny beetles to giant giraffes—and an ancient silence. Namibia is like opening an old book with a thousand pages, where the paper is golden and so thin that it might just fall apart as you turn the pages.
Come with us on our road trip through Namibia, to the top of one of the largest sand dunes in the world, to white moonlight over red infinity, and to Namibia's Death Valley with its impossible, 900-year-old ghost trees. So, hop on the desert buggy and let’s go!
Arriving in the nothingness of the Namib Desert
An area where there is nothing. That's exactly what the long journey into the Namib Desert feels like. You can rumble into the plains in your own rental car or take a guided safari tour. Either way, it is a rumble, because shortly after leaving Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, asphalt roads are practically history and you're bumping over washboard roads of gravel and dirt.
For hours on end, we drive through areas that not only God, but also every kind of spagetti monster, seems to have hurriedly abandoned. Bushes, dust, bushes, fences, dust. It's early September—the best time to travel here, because it's still winter in the southern hemisphere and it is Namibia’s dry season. But this also means that nothing is green, and everything gives the impression that a huge roller of fire has run across the country, knocking out all the vegetation. In Namibia, winter also means that the temperature only gets up to 85°F instead of 104°F. Namibia is a desert country and in some parts of the Namib Desert, only 0.2 inches of rain falls each year. In Germany, the average is 20 to 80 inches (rain—a subject which Germans love to grumpily lament for hours).
After a drive that feels like an expedition in a Mars rover, we land at one of several surreal lodges that stand like small oases in the middle of nowhere. Always complete with an unnecessary swimming pool—a luxury installed only for tourists that I have absolutely no interest in, especially in a country with an extreme shortage of water. Instead, I grab my camera and begin to search for wildlife. Just behind our lodge lurk a few wild oryx. Beautiful creatures that look like a cross between a centaur and a unicorn, except that they have two extremely long, pointed horns. One of them begins to scratch its backside with one horn—a very practical function. I want to begin hiking in the desert straight away, but it's early afternoon and so hot that the cat would literally fly off the tin roof.
Sunset drive in the Namib Desert
In the evening, we take a guided tour in an open desert buggy. “I hope we see a giraffe somewhere in Namibia!” I say to my husband. But out here there is nothing but orange sand, sandstone cliffs and sand dunes. Perfect camouflage for the sandman!
Suddenly, our naturalist guide stops and points to a bush with a couple of hirsute trees. I hear him say
“giraffe.” I'm so excited that I almost fall out of the buggy. Giraffe? Here? Where? And suddenly I see her. Slowly she begins to emerge from the ground, rising between the
branches looking purposefully around into the endless sand and silence of the ancient desert. I'm freaking out! Our first day out in Namibia's nature and I see one of the main
reasons I came to Africa for: a giraffe! Woooow!
A bit later we see the silhouette of a single oryx standing immobile on a nearby mountain ridge and then...then we arrive atop one of the sandstone cliffs looming above our lodge where we just sit and watch the sun set over the entire wide valley. And what a sunset it is! Orange, red, pink, purple—I've only ever seen such intense colors at a sunset in California. It's abnormally colorful. I must get out of the buggy and kick off my shoes. Barefoot is the only way you can only properly experience sand.
Small waves of sand stretch out endlessly in front of us. I know that if the desert buggy would leave now, we would be trapped forever in this beautiful, hostile landscape, most likely dying of thirst before we could reach any water on foot. As we continue to wait, the moon rises. It shines white and cold over the dark red dunes, which still burn from the final traces of sunlight.
Dune climbing in the Namib Desert—Dune 45
The next day, we set off before sunrise with our tour guide driver. Normally I start off a bit grumpy if I have to be up before sunrise, but not today. Today we drive to Sossusvlei and Deadvlei (“vlei” = valley, Namib’s Death Valley) in the heart of the Namib-Naukluft National Park. It is still dark and relatively cool as we sit waiting for admission in the jeep outside the national park gates. The park closes at sunset and reopens at sunrise—to protect against accidents, animal bites, and criminal acts such as poaching.
As we drive in, the crests of the dunes begin to turn red. It is at least as impressive as yesterday's sunset, except that we are now entering an area where some of the world’s largest sand dunes are located. They tower like mountains against the cloudless sky.
Soon, we are trudging up Dune 45, topping out at almost 600 feet, which, along with Daddy Dune (over 1000 feet), is one of the largest accessible dunes in the national park. Even higher dunes, some over 3,200 feet, can be found in South America and China.
Climbing a sand dune sounds like fun, but it's really exhausting. Again and again, we sink up to our ankles in the deep, soft sand, which is over five million years old! How cool is that? We climb higher and higher to the top, from where we look out onto a surreal brown and white plain that simply doesn't seem to belong to this planet.
“Do you remember when we camped in Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes and you had a ton of sand in your shoes and didn't make any progress at all? That was so funny!” I said to my husband with a grin. Muttering something about, “Your humor isn’t” he gives me one of his playful not-so-amused looks.
Then we both, almost simultaneously, begin to run down the dune. If I didn't want to disturb the ancient silence of the desert, I would have loved to scream with abandon.
The Deadvlei and its eerie Trees
A little deeper into the national park is the Deadvlei—the Death Valley of Namibia. You can only get here with four-wheel drive (4x4) vehicle, as the “road” is now made entirely of sand. Our jeep sways and roars and our driver can make only slow progress.
All the other classic sights in Namibia can be reached with a normal 2x4 drive/rental car and there are shuttle vehicles for the last stretch to Deadvlei if in doubt. We booked a tour for our trip to the Namib Desert because we had no experience of driving on sand—and we were able to do the remainder of our Namibian road trip with no problems driving ourselves in a 2x4 SUV with high ground clearance.
But even the sandy track ends at some point and we walk the last mile and a quarter—again through hot, soft sand—to Deadvlei. I'm pretty exhausted when we finally reach the white, flat valley. In the middle there are dark, dry, dead trees standing like claws baking in the sun. These trees have been dead for an incredible 900 years. A sudden change in climate drained the small valley of water and it has been so dry and hot since that time that there are no bacteria to decompose the wood. The trees just stand there. And stand, and stand, in the hot, merciless desert sun. If someone were to hang melting clocks on the branches, the Dalí illusion would be perfect.
The Namib Desert may literally be the area “where there is nothing”, but it is full of magic, full of hostile beauty; colors, animals and wonders. Five-million-year-old sand at our feet and an oryx antelope on the horizon—what could be more beautiful?
Find more adventures from Namibia and deserts of the world here:
