We hired a driver recommended by yesterday's manic tour guide, a local likely lad who's trying to get a tourist services business going, among other things.
We mapped out a route and set off for Swakopmund, a German town twenty miles north of here. The main road out of town took us through apartheid era developments, from the time that this was part of South Africa, out into coastal desert country, an avenue of newly planted palms that looks like I imagine a highway in Doha to look.
Swakopmund is a tidy town founded in the late 19th century by the local Germans after they were pushed out of the provisioning station the British had established in Walvis Bay. A quick walk down the pier and a drive through sufficed, though it would undoubtedly make a agreeable base for further explorations.
We headed west into the desert and escaped the coastal fog that has made for some dreary mornings. This was a truly desolate landscape crossed only by occasional powerlines, water pipelines, a sand blown rail line and dirt tracks heading off who knows where. There is industry out here; granite quarries, uranium mines and the like but the overwhelming is impression is of a wide open flat trackless desolation under a Montana sky. A side road took us into the Goanikontas, a broken lunar landscape that in a geological yesterday must have seen truly prodigious flooding and the canyon forming results they bring. Weaving through the hills and gullies brought us to an honest to goodness oasis, a few dozen flat acres of greenery and grass in amongst the scorched and broken hills. Historically a stopping point for the oxcart trains it has the look of an early colonial trading post. It was a pleasant stop for lunch, served at a glacial pace. I can recommend the Oryx steak and fries.
We retraced our steps back to the road back to Walvis Bay. We had come up the coastal side of the dunes then cut inland to return along the desert side. The dunes exist as a long ridge that runs parallel to the coast, separating the ocean from the desert plains of the interior.
The dunes are numbered, by some evidently unknowable method, and we headed to Dune 7, repuditely the biggest and baddest of the lot. Rumour had it that you can ride a board down it, and ATVs up it. You can indeed rent ATVs at the foot but Dune 7 is off limits. One can readily see that some riders would become separated from their mounts and would race A-over-T to the bottom and probably mow down the crowd to be found there. The board riding was stopped after a few too many pilots found themselves jammed under vehicles at the foot of the dune. There is no run-out, and dune ends at a hard angle to the hard desert floor. We hiked up it, following a ridge crest that rose from the base. In places the sand was pillow soft and ran away when stepped on making for stiff work; twelve inches up, six inches down. The flatter sections were hard surfaced that you could walk on without breaking the surface, particularly when done barefoot. The payoff was the view from the top along the dune line, out across the desert and of the children running tumbling and sliding down the face. GPS told me it rose just shy of 100 ft above the desert floor. It look higher.
A short run back into town, and a stop off to top up provisions, had us back into the cold damp of Walvis the Grey.
Tomorrow we head west to see if we can catch our fleet mates in St Helena, 1,200 n.miles northwest of here.
A few pictures here, I think...
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kaw0zkysoxkpirw/AADxNj5ZOl2GJUo-TQmkaxx4a?dl=0
No comments:
Post a Comment