Sossusvlei is Namibia’s premier tourist attraction. Even though I lived in Namibia in the 1970s, I’d never visited Sossusvlei itself, so I decided to go this time. The entrance to the Park that contains Sossusvlei is at a place called Sesriem.
Sesriem
I have a history with Sesriem. In 1978 I worked there for a weekend as an afloswerker (relief worker) so that the farmer, who owned the old farmhouse called Sesriem, could travel to Walvis Bay to do some shopping for supplies. At that stage I was working fulltime as a Nature Conservation Officer (aka game warden) at Hardap Dam, a resort a few hundred kilometers to the East of Sesriem. Getting from Hardap to Sesriem entailed barrelling down badly corrugated gravel roads in a Ford F-150 pickup truck.
When I was there in 1978, Sesriem was one small farmhouse surrounded by a scattering of large Camelthorn trees (Kameeldoring bome), the whole scene baking at 45°C the weekend I was there in midsummer. I was there for 3 days and only one vehicle arrived, driven by another game warden who had just spent several hours, with his black workers, saving a gemsbok that had become mired in mud at a waterhole. The man was sunburnt a dark shade of crimson, like claret, and looked close to exhaustion. Other than that, nobody arrived.
Today the little farmhouse is still there, but acts as an office annex to a much larger building containing a bar and restaurant, usually full of European, mostly German, tourists. The Camelthorn trees are much the same, although now each one is a campsite costing NA$600 a night. There are many other buildings now, with diverse purposes, plus an airstrip, two petrol stations, a reasonably large settlement of indigenous people, and several very expensive resorts, each with 30 or more chalets, all fully booked the day I arrived there, forcing me to sleep in the back of my 4WD (fortunately I’d had the foresight to buy a bespoke slab of foam to act as a bed in just such an exigency).
I was allowed to sleep in my vehicle at the Sesriem main gate, which is usually never allowed. Reluctant permission was given after I’d told the gate staff my story about working there in 1978. That story, plus my grey hair (old people are very rare in Namibia, and much respected), seemed to buy me some leeway.
As dawn broke, I looked out of my car window to see a queue of at least fifty 4WD vehicles, all chock-full of tourists, lined up at the Sesriem gate, waiting for it to open at dawn so they could make the 90km dash to Sossusvlei. I was stunned, remembering how I’d been alone all weekend here back in 1978. Nowadays hundreds of people arrive there daily. So here is “overtourism” writ large, a wild increase in the number of people travelling.
Treacherous road
The sand road to Sossusvlei becomes more treacherous and impassable as the soft, powdery sand gets hotter, so driving on the sand late in the afternoon is not advisable. Not knowing this, I ended up stuck for 3 hours in the sand, the car resting on its sump, until my luck changed and a 4WD expert, a hugely fat young man, got into the Toyota and in seconds had it out (something to do with putting it into power mode, locking the differential, putting it in reverse, and swinging the steering wheel violently from side to side). I was about to be trapped there overnight, so I was immensely grateful.
Deadvlei
Dead Vlei, the heart of Sossus Vlei (Sossus Vlei can be used interchangeably with Sossusvlei), is over-hyped in my opinion. I would never bother to see it a second time. It’s interesting and unusual, sure, but the country has much more interesting sights and places such as the Fish River Canyon (not visited this time because I actually camped inside that Canyon many years ago and got to know it as very few have), Etosha (not visited this time because “been there, done that”), the Erongo Hills, the Spitzkoppe (been there before), Swakopmund and more. Sossusvlei and Dead Vlei are not the sort places you’ll see anywhere else, and certainly nothing like this exists in Europe, so that’s what gives them their cachet, but as experiences, they are not that interesting or spectacular. And the long, tiring walk in soft sand to the vlei, in searing heat, far from medical help, has resulted in the deaths of more than a few people, according to the Park staff at Sesriem. Old tourists, beware!
