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Write a User ReviewSeas of Sand
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eroding some of its incredible wilderness vibe; but, for the most part, the Namib is a very soulful and special place indeed. Don’t come here for wildlife, but if you’re a connoisseur of stunning landscapes and appreciate arid beauty, then this place should definitely top your agenda.
The Big Empty
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with its gravel plains and weird welwitschia plants is the coast itself at Walvis Bay, just south of Swakopmund, where huge numbers of flamingos and pelicans share the lagoons and salt flats with thousands of plovers and sandpipers.Cinnamon Dunes and Skeleton Trees
The place most people head for is Sossusvlei. To me, this place feels pretty touristy – it has enough accommodation to house coachloads of visitors – but this is, of course, all relative, since nowhere in Namibia ever feels as crowded as the really popular safari destinations elsewhere in Africa. And come dusk, when the geckos start calling and the stars come out, you get a true sense of being enveloped in the desert.
By day, you can float over the sands by hot air balloon or set out by vehicle to admire the spectacular dunes and possibly climb one or two. Getting to the top can be a struggle if it’s hot but I love the exhilarating feeling of running down again. You’ll also see dramatic
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salt pans dotted with sculptural, skeleton-like camelthorn trees, and fairy circles (mysterious bare patches in areas of pale, tufty grass).Namib-Naukluft: The World’s Most Beautiful Desert?
If you love deserts as I do, you’ll love the Namib-Naukluft. Within the borders of this vast park lie vast tracts of the Namib, the oldest desert on earth and perhaps the most beautiful. The sand dunes here, sculpted by the winds down through the millennia are stunning and also happen to be some of the tallest examples of their kind on the planet. To stand high on a sand summit and see the razor-sharp ridgelines rippling out to a horizon that never seems to end is breathtaking in the truest sense of the word. It’s a very well-established stop on the Namibian safari circuit and Sossusvlei can feel like the antithesis of a desert wilderness in high season. But the accommodation is outstanding and varied, and the desert is sufficiently large to mean that it is easy to find a corner with not another soul around. Deadvlei, too, is simply gorgeous with its orange dunes and silhouetted tree trunks. And for real solitude, try hiking the gorges of the quieter Naukluft Mountains, watching for leopards and klipspringers as you go.
A Desert Dream
The highlight of this barren but breathtaking national park is the majestic dunes of Sossusvlei, which rise like giant waves above the parched salt pans that punctuate the desert floor. At sunrise and sunset the changing colors and contours are truly special and it’s not hard to see why Sossusvlei is often cited as the most photographed natural wonder in the world.
What most of the photos omit are the droves of tourists that you’ll see traipsing up and down the dunes like long lines of ants, and the big tour buses hammering along the main road through the park.
Nevertheless, every time I get to the top of Big Daddy or Dune 45 (you can walk up both) and look out over the endless sea of sand, none of that really matters. The sheer beauty of the place drowns it all out.
Not surprisingly, given the unforgiving environment, there isn’t a lot of wildlife around, though you can get spectacular shots of the occasional ostrich or oryx with the dunes behind them.
Desert and Dunes: A Photographer’s Dream
Less well-known but also scenically dramatic are the mountains of the Naukluft Park. With its spectacular gorge of psychedelic rocks in shades of pinks and purples and dotted with quiver trees, the 10km Olive Trail is far more beautiful than the
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17km Waterkloof Trail, although that has stunning views from the plateau. Take plenty of water though – the walks can be hard going in the heat.Alone in the Desert
It’s a scenically stunning area, but alas, the empty ambience I crave from a desert is hard to find due to the sheer density of tourists who visit this particular region. They’re like ants scurrying up and down the tallest of dunes, snapping shots of the trees, and generally stripping the place of its wilderness vibe.
That isn’t to say you shouldn’t go to Sossusvlei; you should. It’s iconic and beautiful, but the Namib-Naukluft National Park covers more than 49,000 square kilometers of desert, and therefore, there are plenty of places where solitude is assured.
Some of
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my highlights have been taking a scenic flight over the dune sea at dusk and walking along lonely sections of the coast. I have done game drives to see oryx and springbok, and I have gone on night tours to find geckos, scorpions, and spiders.The best experience though was when I went on a guided five-night 4x4 adventure through the least accessible areas of the park. Sometimes it felt like we were on Mars; at other times, the landscapes resembled the moon. At night, we slept in the open beneath a sky full of stars made all the brighter by a complete lack of light pollution.
It was beautiful beyond compare.
Desert Delights
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such unique desert-adapted oddities as the welwitschia plant and fog-basking beetle – but no visitor should leave Namibia without experiencing the sheer power of its landscapes. Memorable moments are guaranteed.Soaring Dunes, Desert & Star-Filled Night Skies
Namib-Naukluft’s centre point is the area around Sossusvlei and Deadvlei, where ochre-coloured dunes soar into cloud-free blue skies and the skeletons of long-dead acacia trees etch dark shadows on the white clay. The most visible animals are stately oryx, which you may see silhouetted against the dunes, as well as springbok. Along the coast at Sandwich Harbour, where the dunes cascade into the sea, highlights are the flamingos, pelicans
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and other water birds that frequent the lagoon.While the Sossusvlei area gets many visitors during the high season, the enduring impression of a visit to Namib-Naukluft is the park’s overwhelming sense of space. By day, the sands stretch towards the purple shadows of the Naukluft Mountains on the horizon, while at night, clear, dark skies wrap themselves around you in a planet-studded arc. If you have a choice, visit Namib-Naukluft during the cooler months, as the heat in December and January can be extreme.
Of Deserts, Dunes and Dust
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get caught up in the romance and solitude of this remote place. That is, if you managed to beat the crowds! But don’t linger too long, there’s much more to discover. Hidden behind the sea of dunes is the eerily surreal Dead Vlei. A dried-out salt lake, its parched clay basin is punctuated by the scorched remains of dead trees, some more than 900 years old. May to October is the best time to visit. The desert heat builds rapidly. So sunhats, sunscreen and water are a must.Gemsbok on the Dunes
Although I wouldn’t rate Namib-Naukluft as a great safari destination per se, I regard it to be one of the most special places in Southern Africa, thanks to its scenic immensity. The scenic highlight is Sossusvlei on the park’s western border. Here, the world’s tallest dunes – rippled apricot mountains formed by red sand blown across from the Kalahari – tower above a series of parched seasonal pans that are spectacular at any time, but especially on the rare occasions when they fill up with water, as they did on our most recent visit. for a month once or twice per decade. The Namib supports a low volume of wildlife: in my experience the handsome oryx antelope is the most common large mammal, often to be seen filing nobly across the crest of a dune. An unforgettable attribute of the Namib is the pure beauty of its panoramic night skies, whose embalming silence is broken only by the occasional chatter of a barking gecko or distant whooping of a jackal or a hyena.
One of the World’s Oldest and Most Scenic Deserts, Famous for Its Majestic Giant Dunes
I am always blown-away by the beauty of Sossusvlei; the Namib Desert’s towering rust-red sand dunes blown into razor-sharp ridges by the wind is easily one of the most spectacular and powerful landscapes in Africa. The best time to visit is at sunrise, when the constantly changing play of light gives the desert remarkable tints and textures. Climbing one of the dunes is a must, and it doesn’t matter how many other people are scrambling up the sandy walls; for me, the essence of timelessness and the sense of solitude is an unforgettable experience. If you’ve got the cash to splash, other alternatives are a scenic flight from Swakopmund or a hot air balloon from Sesriem for an aerial perspective of the endless rippling sea of dunes. On the rare occasions when it rains, the desert responds amazingly quickly, producing a miracle of sprouting grasses.
Sossusvlei, a Photographer’s Dream
Namib-Naukluft Park is a place of exceptional beauty. The starkness of a desert-scene is not everybody’s cup of tea. You either love it, or you hate it, but I think it would be difficult for anybody not to be in awe of some of the more spectacular areas of this park. I wasn’t prepared for the sheer beauty of the dunes when I first arrived in the famous Sossusvlei area. This area has been photographed to death, which would normally put me off, but not this time. I couldn’t get enough looking for different angles of the curves and shadows on these giant sand heaps. In an exceptionally wet year, Sossusvlei sometimes fills up with water, which makes for an amazing scene where the dunes reflect in the water below. This place is a photographer’s dream. There isn’t much wildlife around, but ostrich, gemsbok and springbok are easily seen. For hiking, the less spectacular but much less visited Naukluft part of the park has many trails available.