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On Expedition in the Namib Desert

Morning in the Namib desert is surprisingly cold. With a diurnal range in the region of 40°C, even in winter, it is chilly at 4.30am as we wake pre-dawn and fumble through breakfast. Our dream day, Dune 45 demands an early start to watch the sunrise from the shifting summit, looking across the sea of dunes West to the Atlantic coast of Namibia.

The Namib-Naukluft National Park is the largest in Africa. That’s saying something, with competition like Kruger in South Africa, the Maasai Mara, even Etosha in the North of Namibia, which alone is over 350km across.

{img_alt} {img_alt} The park is twice the size of Wales and has four distinct zones. The Namib Sector in the north is a land of harsh nothingness. Barren salt flats, uranium mining and morning sea mist which nourishes the few lichens and slow-growing plants such as the thousands year old Welwitchia mirabilis, clinging stubbornly to life. It is one of the driest places on earth.

In the east, the Naukluft range gives shelter to the Hartmann’s mountain zebra. Classified by IUCN as endangered, it was once believed near extinct in the wild. We can contest this is not the case! The most handsome of zebras, taller and more boldly striped than its plains-dwelling cousin is alive and kicking in this quiet desert mountain enclave. Naukluft literally means narrow gorge, and we spent a night camping in the gorge, overlooked and indeed over lorded by baboons, who stole our precious can of golden syrup from our breakfast table. Porridge is less tasty without it!

{img_alt} {img_alt} {img_alt} The south of the park is the restricted Diamond Sector. Jointly owned and exploited by the Namibian Government and de Beers (Namdeb), this colossal zone stretches south to the Orange River, on the border with South Africa. Diamonds have been harvested from this landscape for hundreds of years, and Namdeb are not keen that we help ourselves – diamonds can literally be picked up from the surface of the dry stony reg desert here so no one enters without strict supervision and a permit.

Finally the west of the park, where we are now spending a couple of days exploring. This is where sand meets sea and reg changes to erg. Stone becomes sand, the Namib yellow-grey sands meet the red wind-blown sands of the Kalahari, thousands of kilometres away. Sand dunes nearly 100m high give us views of dunes stretching over 100km in every direction. The Dead Vlei area is a preserved dead forest of trees killed by the hyper-saline environment and overwhelmed by the shifting sands, an ethereal place.

A place of superlatives, this National Park is only a fraction of our expedition to Namibia.