SAND route: Segment 4 – part 2
It was 120km to Sesreim from the amazing farmstay at Toulous and 40km of it was through a private nature reserve that prohibited camping. Fortunately we had an ace up our sleeve and that was the managers residence halfway through. This broke up the horribly corrugated travel and saved carrying water for the night.
Our biking companions carried on and had a very hot, slow afternoon biking to the far side till near dark and pitching their tents on the side of the road. Meanwhile we had a relaxing afternoon on the porch and conversations with the park rangers about their work, the weather and farming conflicts.
We caught up with the crew next morning as we were travelling faster with our wider tyres and smaller loads. Once in Sesreim Alan and I headed to the fancy lodge and indulged in a massive buffet lunch. Cyclists certainly get their monies worth.
Sesreim is the small service ‘town’ that people stay in when visiting Sossusvlei, the area of dunes and salt flats on the edge of the Namib desert that is on all tourists itinerary when visiting Namibia.
The national park controls access via a gate and if you pay the exhorbitant fee of $60 per person to camp in the park campground you can get access an hour earlier than those staying outside the park (to date campground fees have ranged from $10 to $25pp).
It is 60km to the first carpark and then 4km of serious sand driving to the end of the road. There is a sand shuttle to the carpark for people who don’t want to take the risk of getting their 4WD stuck with the fee for a tow out of the sand of $180. There were 6 vehicles stuck the morning we were there. Hitching was the best option for us so we asked around and sorted a lift the night before.
We were at the gate at 6:30 in the cold of the Namibian morning. It can get to high 20’s in the day but around sunrise it can get near zero. After the sand shuttle Alan asked the driver which is the quickest route up Big Daddy Dune. There was a line of people ahead of us climbing up a leading ridge. The trick, we were told was to stay low and follow a firm salt pan before cutting up onto the ridge to the summit.
Tactics, and fitness, saw us heading off the earlier crowd and plugging fresh tracks in the attractive ridge to the summit. We were blown away by the views of all the closeby sand ridges of the Namib desert as we climbed, and, by the summit panorama. We could enjoy the summit to ourselves for 20 mins before the next people arrived.
From the summit there is a fun, direct sand run down the large face (250m) to the white salt pan below. At the far end of the Deadvlei salt pan are 1000 year old trees that were left high and dry when sand dunes cut off the river. It was too dry for them to decompose so they are preserved. With the white salt pan, dark trunks, and a background of red sand and blue sky they are striking and very photogenic.
Back in Sesreim we shifted to the $10 ‘behind the service station’ camp with the 4 fellow bikers. It was a United Nations of Germany, Turkey, Brazil and Norway. Compared to their multi year journeys from Europe and down/up the African continent we are mere weekend warriors on our 3 month trip. Typically they stick more to paved highways when they can and they tend to travel a lot heavier than us.
We spent the coin saved on camping on an even huuger buffet dinner with Atla, the Norwegian, who is hoping to complete a North Cape (Norway) to Cape Town and return via opposite coasts. He put us to shame in the eating department. The walk back to the service station camp allowed food to settle. All in all it had been a great day.
