D&J's Sabbatical in Africa: Namib Desert

After a long, hot drive (without any further incidents with the police), we passed over the Tropic of Capricorn and arrived in the Namib Desert. We unpacked our tents while watching for scorpions (yes scorpions!), took a dip in the pool to cool down, and then headed out to for a walking tour of the dunes. It was about 3:30pm... no the hottest part of the day but close to it.

Our tour guide for the desert walk was a bushman. The bushmen are the original inhabitants of this desert land. They are usually short and sinewy people that speak with a clicky language. He spent time talking to us about the desert, the animal and plant life and how the desert changes over time. First thing that we learned is that in the desert, it rains about once every 10-15 years! Yes, 10-15 years. The plants are able to sort of hibernate during the periods without rain and quickly release seeds that germinate almost immediately once the rains come.

One thing that has changed in the last 5 years or so is the amount of rain in the desert. According to our bushman, it has rained 3 times in the last 5 years, which is extremely unusual...

The Namib Desert is the oldest desert in the world, dating back to millions and millions of years ago. During the winter months, the winds blow from the mountains in the west, and during the summer months, they blow from the ocean in the east. Because the winds blow evenly from both directions each year, the dune ridges run along north-south lines and do not move position east to west. However, the dunes can expand on their edges in a north or south direction. The tallest dune is about 150m (500ft)!

When the rains come, the river basin that runs through the middle of the desert floods (the patch of land in the middle of the picture above that has a lot of trees and plants). The water can stay for a few days or a few months, depending on

the amount of rain that fell. Then the water disappears and the plants that grew wait for the next rains. Now, because the dunes can expand north to south, over many hundreds of years the landscape can change and the areas where the water stands changes. Areas that for hundreds of years had water can be cut off. We walked up and over one dune to see such an area called a 'dead pan'. It was very eerie looking, like a landscape from a foreign planet. The trees here have not see

n water in over 900 years! The dead trees, however, still stand because their root system stretched over 100ft into the ground in search of water. (for any of you movie buffs, we learned that this dead pan was where one scene from the movie 'The Cell" with Jennifer Lopez was filmed).

After walking around the dunes with our guide some more, we were all hot, tired and ready to head back to the truck. After saying good-bye, we headed off to the most photographed dune in the world "dune 45" to watch the sunset (Picture below is the view of the dune from the parking lot). The