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Here are colours that ease your soul. Oranges, greys, beiges, yellows and greens. Colours of the earth, colours of organic things, colours of sandy and stony things. Tawny, taupe, amber, umber, ochre, fawn and fallow. Calming, soft, restful, earthy. And the endless, cloudless sky blushes with delicate nuances of rose, orange and blue.
So lovely is the desert nation Namibia which is the first of three countries on my itinerary for this 2010 trip to Africa.
In my mind’s eye the great red dunes in Sossusvlei have always held a special place. Wanting to see and be among them is my main reason for choosing Namibia as a destination. I want to breathe the hot and dusty desert, feel the grit of the sand and gaze on the graceful gemsbok.
With a couple of friends from Denmark, namely Birthe and Jørn, and my favourite guide in Africa, the incomparable Mike Scott of Khangela Safaris (http://www.khangela.com/), we head southwest from Windhoek towards Sossusvlei the day after we arrive in Namibia. On the way we see springbok, klipspringer, gemsbok, baboons and ostriches. We set up camp and listen in the darkness to the chirps of barking geckos and the yelps of black backed jackals. We gaze at the infinite night sky, a velvet blanket strewn with diamonds, and find the Southern Cross and Scorpio.
Next morning at 5:30 a.m. we head out for the highest dunes in the world – some reaching up to 325 m. The morning is chilly. We clamber up on the crest of the fine, soft, orange sand of Dune 54. With each struggling step forward I seem to slide backwards as much as I progress upwards. My friends are more fit than me and I pant and lag behind.
When we reach the top we drink our morning tea while watching the sunrise. We have a front row view of one of nature’s best movies. A simple pastime; a great joy. When I finish my tea, I find that the bottom of the metal mug is filled with what looks like the fine coffee grinds you typically find in the bottom of a cup of espresso coffee. This, however, is sand, and I’ve got it crunching between my teeth.
After the tea and the sunrise Mike and my friends make a mad dash down the dune, kicking up orange clouds of sand like frisky klipspringer. I make a more stately – or timid – descent back the way I came up.
