Amazing evening at Sesriem and Sossusvlei, capped off with Ostrich burgers on the camp fire and Namibian red wine.
The dunes are huge, and it’s very tough to climb to the top of Dune 45, but I did.
Sadly the place is overrun by tourists (OK, so I’m a tourist too, but why are so many other tourists such monumental fuckwits?) and it was too windy to fly Solo (the drone)
I didn’t want to risk it because on the road from Fish River Canyon to Sesriem I tried to use Solo to film myself driving by, but Solo got confused and flew into a tree…
I could see the live video stream from up in a tree somewhere but it took ages to find which one. Lucky for me, Solo only broke some propellers, the tree caught him and didn’t let him tumble to the ground, and standing on top of The Beast left Solo just within reach. Narrow escape, and I have spare props.
Perhaps at sunrise the air will be still enough to try flying Solo at the dunes.
Today I began to experience the full horror of corrugated gravel roads the same as led to my crash when biking through Mongolia.
The action of vehicles over sand and gravel causes it to form ripples like a washboard (wtf is a washboard anymore?)
It shakes and pounds and bounces and it’s bloody awful.
The other problem is dust. Everything I own is covered in dust, even inside The Beast. It gets everywhere. On the road, you leave a dust cloud a mile long.
When there’s something car on the road ahead of you, you have to drop back and slow to their speed, or you have to drive entirely blind through the dust to try to pass, without a clue what may be coming the other way or even where the he’ll the track a actually is.
When something cones the other way and the wind is to the left, their dust cloud washes in front of you and you’re left blind for the next 30 seconds or more whether you like it or not.
Thankfully there’s only one other vehicle every 20 miles or so.
I don’t fancy biking through it like the group of bikers I saw onthe road today. Covered in dust, blinded by dust, and bouncing over the corrugations all day long. No thanks.