Day 6 Desert Lodge and Sossusvlei

We are on the edge of the Namib/ Naukluft National Park. Just a huge expanse of sand, where an amazing amount of wildlife manages to exist.

The Sossusvlei is an area of extraordinary beauty – red dunes blown in strange shapes by the constant wind.

Our guides had explained the difficulty of climbing the famous dune 45 and the access to it, a 4km walk in sandy harsh conditions. Normally a 4km.walk would not phase me but there were 4WD vehicles available to cover this stretch, such is the difficulty of the trek.

I felt I would enjoy being in Desert Lodge,a unique place for the day, rather than slogging up a sand dune. Although it was bordered by the desert, it had a swimming pool and a large bar with tables you could sit at to take advantage of the wifi. I spent a happy day observing the animals coming and going to the waterholes. Our accommodation was top class. It was newly-built chalets with verandahs facing the desert. The front part of the chalets had two beds, then a wall behind with openings on both sides, with access to the bathroom, toilet and clothes hanging space.

Eventually, the group returned. They were all exhausted and at least one of the group was ill from the heat. No one climbed dune 45.

We were here from the end of October to mid November, which is moving towards high summer. The temperature reaches 50′ C in December and the rain starts to fall. We were witnessing Southern Africa at the end of a very dry spell. As we moved up towards Zimbabwe, we saw the first of the rains starting, but that was not for another two weeks.

Our guides cooked us a delicious dinner. Next morning, I took a walk up the avenue- about a mile- so that I could loosen out my calf muscles which had begun to tighten up with all the sitting on the bus.

I had a great view of some buffalo that had come to drink at the waterholes. amazing powers of survival. I felt myself amazed at how living things adapted to nature. Coming from a country where we have almost continuous rain, this seemed like a miracle to me. We were to spend another week in this extraordinary Country of Namibia, travelling next to the coast and the vast expanses of beaches that dwarf any coastline in Europe.