Day 25 - Sand, Sand, Sand

Mariental to Sesriem, Sesriem Camping Site NWR

Another early start to drive through the desert – this time we had a couple of hundred kilometers of dirt road to negotiate. Although some sections had water over the road, we managed OK, in fact some sections of the road could be driven at over 100kmh. They’ve had so much rain that the grass looked like soft green carpet running up to the edges of the mountains in the distance.

We arrived at Sesriem just after lunch and took the drive to the famous Namibian sand dunes, extraordinary orange colours, and too hot to walk in even in sandals. We climbed a couple of dunes on the way in, including Dune 45 (which is 45km from Sesriem). We reached the end of the 2WD road, where we were expecting to find a 4WD shuttle to take us the last 5km to part to Sossusvlei, but there was no drive – just four empty jeeps.

We started heading back and made ourselves comfortable perched halfway up Dune 45 to watch the sun set, after which we returned to camp, and on the way through the gate we were asked whether we knew anything about the car stuck at Sossusvlei. We explained that we hadn’t seen it as we couldn’t get to Sossusvlei – so it sounds like someone must have attempted the 4WD section (because the drivers had knocked off early) and got stuck - so we're lucky we didn't try the same thing.