Short: Left Helmeringhausen early and drove to Sesriem, decided to spend the afternoon in Sesriem, watched the sunset from Dune 45 off the road to Sossusvlei, cooked dinner, walked to Sossusvlei lodge to watch the German soccer match, sleep
Long: In place of a rooster, Helmeringhausen is home to one of the loudest and more annoying ducks on the face of this earth. At around 5am the fat feathered monster began quacking continuously for almost two hours. After deciding not to kill the duck both Niki and I had breakfast, showered, and drove about 10 meters to the center of town. We were able to get our first good luck at the town (population <30) and found it to occupy only a few acres of land. There seems to be no electricity in the city, as generators ran all night at the guest house and the petrol station had to start a generator in order to fill Betsy in the morning. We snapped a quick shot of the Standard Bank branch as we left – Pretty funny.
Upon leaving Helmeringhausen Niki and I took bets on how many vehicles we would pass on the way to Sesriem. I guessed twelve and Niki seven…Niki won. The road to Sesriem is >250 km’s, unpaved, but in fairly good condition. In the 4-5 hours it took to drive to Sesriem, we only passed seven other vehicles. We did, however, pass some of the first large mammals of the trip. We saw quite a few Steenboks, Onyx, Ostriches, and even a few Zebra. Sesriem sits at the eastern foot of the Naukluft-Namib Park and acts as the base camp for visitors to Sossusvlei. The park is home to some of the largest and highest (some approximately 300 meters) sand dunes in the world. Sossusvlei is an area, only made accessible by a paved road laid in a rare, narrow, and dry valley, about 75 km’s west of Sesriem. Upon arriving at Sesriem we were amazed to find out that prices had increased almost tenfold since our guide book was published in early 2007. We paid almost $20 for a vehicle permit and approximately $35 dollars per person for a camp site. Staying within the park is well worth it though, as you can drive the road to Sossusvlei to watch both the sunset and sunrise…and this is exactly what we did.
After paying for the campsite we relaxed by a small pool with a few other campers, and then decided to drive to Dune 45 to watch the sun set. Dune 45 is located 45 km’s down the road to Sossusvlei and coincidentally 45 dunes into the park. The hike to the top is not particularly easy as it is somewhat difficult to hold your footing. This leads to a two steps up, one slide back, forward motion. From the top of Dune 45 you look east and only see dry arid, low brush, desert with a few small mountain ranges and looking west you see sand dunes, stretching more than 100km’s, all the way to the coast. The climate is somewhat hard to deal with due to the temperature extremes. Sand does not retain heat well and therefore temperatures vary tremendously. It has been 80 degrees during the day and in the 40’s at night. At times the sun becomes shrouded by clouds and this leads to an almost immediate drop in temperature of at least 10 degrees. It is currently low season in this part of Namibia and we have thus far been amazed at how few tourists there are. This was once again the case as we hiked to the top of Dune 45; there wasn’t a sole in sight for miles. A small group of tourists did arrive just as the sun was setting, but not before we were able to capture some great pictures. On the drive back to Sesriem we saw, first hand, one of the leading causes of vehicle accidents in Namibia and Southern Africa. On a few occasions Steenboks jumped across the road, however we are told it is the larger mammals that we need to worry about…luckily we saw none of these.
Once back we cooked and then walked from the campsite to the much more expensive Sossusvlei lodge to see if we could find the Germany soccer/football match playing for Niki. Interestingly, much of the accommodation around the Sesriem area is luxury, and the going rate is 300-900 USD per night. We spoke with a few of the workers and eventually found ourselves, beer in hand, at the resort conference center watching the German soccer match. A German win later, and Nikolai happy, we headed back to the campsite and went to bed early. We have to be up at 5:30 for the sunrise.
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