More desert, this time from above, the second of my internal Namibian flights, to Swakopmund on the coast (of which more tomorrow). The shapes here are just amazing, like the earth itself is crinkled, akin to the skin of a passion fruit, say. Quite probably, no one ever sets foot here from one century to the next.
Sossusvlei is one of Namibia’s major tourist attractions and probably you have seen pictures of it before — sinuous, ruddy, massive sand dunes pictured at dawn etc. etc. And I did get such shots today. But I’ll go with this one. Dead Vlei (a ‘vlei’ is the Afrikaans word for a marsh or riverbed without open water in it) was once connected to Sossusvlei but a few hundred years ago, shifting sand dunes cut it off and since then it has dessicated to a hard clay pan with ancient, dead trees still left from that time.
What is behind them, and the seated woman, is not grey sky but a massive wall of sand: the dune known as ‘Big Daddy’, which is nearly 1,000 feet (324m) high. The Namibian tourist board would like you to believe it’s the world’s biggest but I checked it out and it’s not even close to the winner, which is a dune in Argentina that’s a staggering 4,000 feet high: Big Daddy is in the top 10, though. A marvellous and highly photogenic place, even if I did have to get up at 5.30 to reach it.
This was a day on which I could have posted any one of several pictures, including many with cute fauna. Today I captured shots of ostrich, oryx, wildebeest, zebra (the most unexpected), and springbok. But this one makes it because of its nicely unexpected nature. On the flight from Windhoek to the airstrip at Geluk we passed over increasingly barren and arid landscapes, yet still, here and there, there were dwellings, astonishingly remote. A few minutes before we landed I caught sight of this place, nestled in the shade of the rock, for all the world like a Fremen sietch, sheltering from the sandworms on relatively solid ground (a reference from Dune: if you don’t know this great novel by now, then shame on you, and yes, the movies are decent too).
Then, about 90 minutes later, I discovered that this was my hotel for the next two nights. Right now I type this in the leftmost of the line of huts to the right: the two buildings at the end of the gravel road being the restaurant, reception and staff accommodation of the Namib Outpost Lodge. I’ve certainly never had the privilege of staying anywhere else like this in my life.
You’ll see wildlife. There’s plenty of time yet.
Very little happens in Windhoek on a Sunday, except some football, which is where I went. But enough pictures of football get on here, so I will spare you that. The stadium was on the edge of town, and in anticipation of the long queues which formed for the single ticket booth (behind me as I took this), these guys were opportunistically setting up before the match — and why not, I bought a beer from them, certainly. The landscape seems typical of the surroundings of the capital.
A weekend spent in Windhoek to transition to this new country (the 49th different one I have ever visited, incidentally). Had I known this was possibly the world’s most low-key capital city, particularly on a weekend, I might have replanned slightly, but I’m not complaining. The best lunches in town seemed to be available at the Namibia Craft Centre on Tal Street (recommendation…) and you can also look at some decent artwork, and buy some rails, if you really want.
This is the fourth shot ever on this blog to definitely feature the territory of two different countries, and all the other three have included England (two where English land was seen together with Wales, and one with France). However, after departing Manchester on the plane shown yesterday, and changing in Addis Ababa, I am now nowhere near England nor will be for some weeks.
The left-hand two-thirds of this shot, including almost all the irrigated land, is Namibia, where I landed about an hour after this point to begin my fortnight’s holiday. On the right, Angola, with the Kavango river forming the boundary between the two. Google Maps makes it possible to identify the location quite precisely: the irrigated circles are the Ndonga Linena Greenscheme, if you want to check my navigation.
Finally, I’m off. This evening, this vehicle constituted flight ET729 from Manchester to Addis Ababa, via (for some reason) Geneva: the service that saved the day back in January last year when everything went tits up due to a few snowflakes, but that is in the past. I like the Ethiopian Airlines logo, which gives it a suitably avian feel. This will be my last photo taken in the UK until 20th May.
Clare thinks that this picture should be called ‘Death and Rebirth’. Perhaps it’s also an attempt to produce a combination of terms that has never and will not again appear on a single Google search. My last day at home for some time. See you later.
Another depressing day of rain. I’m glad I’m off out of here on Thursday, yet it looks like I am going to miss out on spring entirely, as it certainly hasn’t started here yet. At least my penultimate evening at home was clear: good enough to see Jupiter, anyway, which pops into the shot to the right of the mill tower. But it seems it won’t last.
Goose couples like these are pairing up around the valley’s watercourses. Doubtless within a couple of months these two will be shepherding around little balls of golden fluff that, within a reasonably short space of time, will turn into hissing, crapping brutes just like their parents. But I guess that’s what human parents do too, right?
Being 42 