Namibia sand dunes at Sossusvlei

The "Namib Sand Sea" is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed 2013. The Namib Sand Sea lies along the arid African coast of the South Atlantic lying wholly within Namibia’s Namib-Naukluft Park. The UNESCO page says :

We were staying at the Sossusvlei Lodge. We had to leave early at 7.15 am to join the queue of vehicles to get a ticket to enter the Namib-Naukluft national park. The permit had been bought last evening. Then we drove into the park, past the airstrip and stopped to watch the sunrise.

There was a solitary hot air balloon flying. We saw some oryx and 2 black backed jackals by the road. The vegetation was tall dune grass,  and bushman short grass which is just trimmed by the grazers, they don’t pull up the grass. There was good rain last rainy season, unlike the previous 2-3 years, so the grass is still good.

The dunes here are the tallest in the world, in places rising more than 300 m above the desert floor. Dunes are formed from 5 million year old sand accumulated by the Orange River from the Kalahari Desert.  We stopped by a dry river and this tree for photos of Dune No 1. My legs grew in the early morning light!

Also stopped by Dune 58 for photos -

Saw Dune No 7 which is the highest in the neighbourhood at 388 m. Dune 45 is the most accessible and there were lots of people climbing. It is 45 km from the gate and is over 170 m tall -

We drove further to a car park where we transferred to 4WD having first queued for the non-flushable loo.

The 4WDs took us across the Sossusvlei sand, between Big Mama Dune on our right and Big Daddy Dune (800 m) on our left. We then split up, some of us chose to climb the dune. At the bottom we saw lots of tracks, some maybe springbok. 

Mesembryanthemum guerichianum, ice plant, native to Namibia and South Africa

The approach to the dune, over the white clay pan -

The dune with human ants crawling up the right hand side -

A hardy flower -

The climb up wasn’t too bad. It is 325 m but we went nowhere near the top. Good views down onto the pan.

We stopped here to allow everyone to catch up. 

It's a long way down this steep slope -

So when our guide said we were going down this steep slope, we all thought he was joking. But he wasn't. The idea was to just dig your heels in and go, allowing the shoes to completely fill with sand. It was a long way and initially didn’t seem to get shorter, but once committed you had to continue. After a while it was actually quite easy and fun.

Looking back up -

This photos gives a better perspective of the height and length of the slope we descended -

This video taken by Lynn shows a few of us coming down -

and this one shows our youngest member running down -

At the bottom, Deadvlei, we emptied our shoes, thankfully the sand was dry and not sticky like sand on the beach, so came out of the shoes and socks quite easily. We then went to see the salt pan, with the 100+ year old dead trees. They died when the water disappeared but don’t rot in the climate.

Sossusvlei is a salt and clay pan surrounded by high red dunes in the southern part of the Namib Desert. Sossus is no return or dead end, vlei is marsh, now clay pan.  We then made our way back, it was a bit of a slog, and nice when we could walk on the harder dry salt and clay.

Back at the car park, we had to wait for a vehicle, so I took photos of a weavers nest -

acacia pods

We were lucky and got on open jeep so it was a nice drive and we saw 2 ory,. The oryx is Namibia's national animal. 

We then made our way back the same way, saw a large group of Springbok. Stopped to take photos of the UNESCO World Heritage sign, for the salt sea.