Catching Up With Ourselves

Mon 20^th May ‘24

Given that we’re going to be spending over a week in the Namib desert, both here on the NamibRand reserve and in the next couple of stays further north, we thought we’d better find out more about it and so we signed up for the guided ‘Desert Walk’. Great in theory but the start time is 7am and so yet another early alarm call. Sunrise isn’t till around 7:20 (we are heading into winter here) but at least we get to watch the ever changing colours of the pre-dawn sky as it progressively lights up the landscape. Golly, we love this country.

The walk is lead by Cornelius whom we met at check in and we stride off away from our camp and up the nearest dune. We haven’t got far when Cornelius points out some small lines in the sand radiating out from a semi-circle. He explains that this is the lair of a white-lady spider (yes, they are a thing) the lines are feet / trail marks, and the semi-circle is its trapdoor, which he duly opens with a small stick. Apparently, the spider digs a hole in the sand and then covers the entrance with silk to stop the hole filling up. It then has a home in the cool sand away from the desert heat as well as a lair to wait for prey to walk by.

As we go on, Cornelius points out more tracks made by beasts large and small – from the toktokkie beetles, to moles, geckos, hares, foxes, oryx and even the pad print from an hyena. Each one clear and distinctive – if you know what you are looking for! There are even life and death stories written in the sand, as we came across one instance where a toktokkie had met its end – a clear toktokkie trail coming in and then the marks from a battle. I don’t think it ended well for the toktokkie.

He also drew a map in the sand to explain about the Namib Desert and how it was formed. The Namib is the world’s driest desert, typically only getting about 30mm of rain a year (and about half that this year). It stretches from southern Angola all down the coast of Namibia and into northern South Africa. It was formed by the Orange River (which forms the border between Namibia and South Africa taking rocks and sediment out of the Drakensberg mountains in SA out to the Atlantic, where the wind, waves and ocean currents, washed it back inland.

It was interesting to listen to Cornelius explain all this – and some of it has even stuck. But all the while there is a sky that is constantly changing in colour and this incredible landscape all around us, cast in a golden light from the new day’s sun. How we are supposed to concentrate on anything, I’m not quite sure.

We take a couple of hours walking in a big loop starting and ending at our camp, returning at what would normally be time for our first coffee of the day. Well, that sounds like a good idea along with the breakfast that we didn’t have time for before Cornelius arrived. After that, we opt for something very unusual – relaxation! There’s no internet or phone signal here, we’re as up to date as we can be with blog and photos, the day is getting progressively warmer, so really the only thing we can do is kick-back, read a book and keep half an eye out for any visitors to our camp or the nearby waterhole. The guestbook talks about visits from a Cape Fox, but the best that we got was a solitary oryx. As, we’ll explain tomorrow, we’re learning that oryx are a) very timid and b) very stupid. Still, we wouldn’t want to tangle with those horns.

The other thing that we can do here is practise our off-road, on sand driving. There is a marked 4×4 track which loops around the area, and should take around 45 mins to drive around (with a 20kmph speed limit). As we’re going to be driving on sand later on in this trip (particularly in Botswana), this is too good an opportunity to miss. It is also another chance to see more of the area. So, we let some air out of the tyres, engage 4WD and off we go. All very successful with the only tricky pieces coming as we crossed over the wave of dunes – here the key was to engage 1st gear early on so that you didn’t need to change gear whilst going up a sandy incline.

After we’d both had a go at this, we felt quite a bit more confident about our ability to cope with the road/track conditions we’ll meet ahead. Mungo’s ability is not in doubt – only that of the idiots behind the wheel. Flush with success, and with the light turning golden once again, we find some larger dunes to climb up and see what we can find. No footprints, just a wind-blown ridge and some gentle ripples in the sand catching the light and catching shadows. Of course we needed to take some more photographs!

We’re cooking for ourselves again tonight – lamb chops/cutlets from the braai pack (thank you Klein Aus Vista). Although there are lights in the camp, we’re learning that you need to get the fire lit before sunset, and even then we are still cooking in the dark. So, over lamb and red wine we mull over our time here. Despite the early starts it has felt like we’ve had a bit of a respite after a hectic last few days and, no doubt, the hectic days to come. We feel like we’ve been able to catch up with ourselves.