May Day Trip to Naukluft and the Red Desert

I've been too busy lately to post anything, but have written some notes about the last month that I'll share now. We had a lovely trip over the May Day holidays to the Namib-Naukluft National Park and the Sussevlei sand dunes. Since we just moved, we only went for a few days, but it was a wonderful trip. The first day we drove down to the Namib-Naukluft Park, which encompasses a huge area that is the boundary between the red deserts of the Namib with the interior of Namibia. The drive was essentially a 4 ½ drive southwest from Windhoek on well-groomed gravel roads. There are hardly any towns, and very few people living in this region. The scenery was simply breathtaking. We camped at a little campground in the park along the river, and the only campers in the entire park were our party and another group. Every time we go camping, we think the stargazing was the best possible ever. Well, at Naukluft it was even better than that. There is no light pollution whatsoever here, and I’ve never seen the stars anywhere like this before. Across the stream from our campground was a big limestone cliff, which as the home to a large troupe of noisy baboons who kept an eye on us. We camped with another family, and had a very nice time out in the wilderness. At night, our friend heard a noise, and a Genet was about two meters from our campfire. Later we saw these nocturnal creatures in the trees.

The next morning we planned to go on a hike to a series of pools in the river. But unfortunately, we got too close to a red wasp’s nest, and the mother wasp chased after us, stinging Alice, Ruby (twice) and me. These were nasty, painful bites, so we abandoned our hike. Instead, we drove off ahead to our next campsite only 100 or so kilometers away. Bill’s GPS listed a site in the middle of nowhere (only 10 Km off the road) that said Neuras Winery. Since we were early, we thought, why not? We found this beautiful oasis in the middle of the desert, with no one around. Bill searched around, and finally found one of the owners, who was a wonderful German woman who had retired from Windhoek 10 years ago. Although they are in the middle of a very dry desert, they are able to have a winery because of a few natural springs. Beautiful, high palms and reeds line the springs, which create the nutrients for the pools. This couple irrigates the way the Ancient Egyptians did, flooding their one-hectare vineyard with a series of irrigation canals, and the wine is organic. The woman gave us a complete tour of her vineyard, gave us onions to rub on our wasp bite, and we bought a few bottles to save for later. It was the neatest winery we’ve been to.

That night, we met up with our friends again and stayed in a campground by a lodge. The only thing memorable about this place was the millions and millions armored ground crickets which were everywhere. These are huge bugs that I found particularly gross. There were probably 1,000 of them at our campsite, and you had to watch the ground constantly when you walked so that you wouldn’t squish one (even more gross).

The next morning we woke up and went to the red desert of Sossouvlei. Many people associate these huge, red sand dunes with Namibia. We didn’t have a lot of time there, but we did climb up to Dune 45 (Maxine and I made it all the way to the top) and ran down. It really did feel like climbing a mountain it was so high. We are already planning our next trip down there, where we will camp right in the national park and stay a few days.