Namib Desert

This makes Namibia an ideal country for a deep educational exploration on Geography 101.

The Namib Desert is the defining geographic feature of the country.

It is widely regarded as the oldest desert in the world, stretching along Namibia's coastline.

Covering rent sand, dunes dominate the landscape and shape climate and settlement patterns.

You know, so on and so forth.

And, you know, the Namib Desert, 1,850 K.

So, I mean, I just, There's something about those places at those times of year.

And multiple projects, by the way, in the Mojave Desert, in Death Valley, which is off-road projects way out in the middle of nowhere.

And I'm trying to move large distances.

So that means in order to get up to 60 to 100 km, some expeditions I'm carrying absolutely everything, food, tent.

Just this past March, Stefano Gregoretti and I, who we've crossed the Namib Desert, we've done a lot of projects together, Kamchatka, we brought with us everything we needed, tent, food, supplies, sleeping gear, everything except water.

And we had water caches dropped or set whenever possible in the desert.

As we approach, something unbelievable unfolded.

The Namib Desert typically receives less than a few inches of rain a year, but unseasonal winter rains had completely transformed the gravel plains.

Instead of endless dry gravel, vast swathes of the desert were blanketed in a vibrant carpet of blooming yellow flowers.

Seeing delicate wildflowers stretching across the desert floor with these beautiful glowing terracotta dunes felt very special indeed.

Yeah.

And people, oh, did you really stay in tents? It's the Namib Desert.

Yes.

But there had to be two of these units because there were gravel paths between where the tents were.

One famous panel depicts the Lion Man, a lion with five human toes on each paw and an upright tail ending in a human footprint, representing a shaman transforming into an animal during a spiritual trance.

Even more astonishing, there are engravings of marine creatures like seals and flamingos, demonstrating that inland hunter-gatherers either maintained trade routes through the Namib Desert or traveled over 100 kilometers to the Atlantic coast thousands of years ago.

Returning to the Mowani Mountain Camp in the late afternoon, we were pleased to see the kitchen team took our previous night's feedback to heart.

They prepared a rich spice potato curry alongside some sautéed vegetables piled over toast.

This was quite a wild day, I would say, of this entire trip, and this brings us to the close of part two of our Namibia series.

Make sure you tune in for our third and final episode, because part three is where the landscape shifts into something otherworldly.

We're gonna be leaving the cool ocean fog behind and heading deep into the ancient heart of the Namib Desert, seeing monumental red dunes.

We're going to be seeing some incredible landscapes and some amazing desert adventures.

From there, you then travel for about 30 kilometers, and then you would find Moon Mountain Lodge foot of the Naukluft Mountain.

Moon Mountain Lodge is situated on the border of the Pro Namib and the, uh, Namib Desert.

From that point, you can basically see ...

Backdrop, you have the Naukluft Mountains, and then in front of you, the magnificent view of the Namib Desert with the red dunes.

People can also travel in from Walvis Bay.

There's another airport in Walvis Bay where people can land.

The specific point where we sit, you see the petrified hills of the Namib, which is also quite unique.

They are basically like sandstone, so it's a bit of a formation that stands out in the desert.

You know, I think he went to 7,700 feet on Everest.

Um, he ran a marathon in the Namib Desert with no water, so he's done a lot of cold stuff, so he wanted to do, um, heat as well.

Uh, he swam 57 meters under ice with no goggles, fins, and just in shorts.

His eyes, like retinas froze, um, so he nearly missed the hole to come up the other side.

Uh, yeah, so ...

No, not Namibia.

Namib Desert.

Uh, he did it in, in, uh, with no water, and it was like 40, 40 degrees, 40-plus degrees, whatever, Celsius.

The country's topography is essentially divided into three parallel bands.

The coastal desert, which flanks the entire length of the Atlantic coastline, and that's called the Namib Desert, widely recognized as the oldest desert on the planet, with hyperarid conditions persisting for tens of millions of years.

Moving inland from the coastal desert, we've got the Central Plateau and Great Escarpment.

This land rises dramatically up into a high rocky central plateau, which is where the capital city of Windhoek is cradled at around 1,700 meters above sea level.