By Roxanne Reid
Sunrises and sunsets in Namibia are pretty special. Anyone who has seen a few will agree. But when they top off a perfect day they – and the people you share them with – live on in your heart. That’s what happened to us on a sunset drive from Little Kulala, Sossusvlei.
Sunrises and sunsets in Namibia are pretty special. Anyone who has seen a few will agree. But when they top off a perfect day they – and the people you share them with – live on in your heart. That’s what happened to us on a sunset drive from Little Kulala, Sossusvlei.
We arrived at Wilderness Safaris lodge, Little Kulala, hot and tired. And, if truth be told, a little grumpy. The silly woman who lives inside our GPS had sent us on an unnecessary detour along a dusty and corrugated road. But our welcome was so warm and genuine that the grumps evaporated.
A cool cloth to wipe off the dust; a refreshing ginger beer. The staff laughed off our suspicion that we’d missed lunch and put us at a table on the deck with a wraparound view of red desert sands and sculptural camel thorn trees. Mouths already open in appreciation of the view, we tucked in to food so delicious that any good restaurant in Cape Town would have been proud. For us, it was a happy surprise in the Middle of Nowhere, Namibia.
The warmth and individual personalities of the staff shone through all their interactions with us, from their smiling welcome, through their singing and dancing after supper, to their goodbye song from the steps of the main building when we left. (To discover more about our reaction to the wonderful people of Little Kulala, read my article for The Good Holiday.)
Our enormous ‘kulala’ (it means ‘to sleep’) had a glass wall in front so it seemed to melt into the landscape of desert and lilac mountains beyond. There was a private plunge pool for cooling off without having to pass up the view even for a moment. And there was an extra bed on the rooftop – called a skybed – where we could soak up the stars at night or greet the pink skies at dawn.
Anyone who could still be grumpy just didn’t deserve to be there at all.
Anyone who could still be grumpy just didn’t deserve to be there at all.
At four in the afternoon lively guide Athan Gawiseb took us on a nature drive to show us some of the 37 000-hectare private wilderness area around Little Kulala. He explained that the limestone mountains were 170-180 million years old, mostly sedimentary rock with a high level of iron oxide and magnetite. The iron oxide is what gives the mountains and dunes their reddish colour, because the iron ‘rusts’ over time.
He shared his knowledge of some remarkable adaptations to this hyper-arid environment. For instance, the gemsbok and springbok we saw are usually grazers but to get more food here they will browse on leaves as well.
Plants have adapted too. To limit evaporation, many have tiny leaves, like the stinky shepherd’s tree (Boscia foetida). ‘The green stems provide moisture for animals,’ said Athan. ‘Flies pollinate the plants, which attract them with their smell. But once there’s fruit they don’t smell anymore. The fruit are about the size of an olive and they’re nice to eat. You can also make beer from them.’
All around us were blonde ripples of tall bushman grass. A scrub hare bounded across the track and a Ruppell’s korhaan, endemic to the Namib, went kraak kraak as it walked across the veld. ‘Around here we call them desert frogs because of that call,’ he said.
Plants have adapted too. To limit evaporation, many have tiny leaves, like the stinky shepherd’s tree (Boscia foetida). ‘The green stems provide moisture for animals,’ said Athan. ‘Flies pollinate the plants, which attract them with their smell. But once there’s fruit they don’t smell anymore. The fruit are about the size of an olive and they’re nice to eat. You can also make beer from them.’
All around us were blonde ripples of tall bushman grass. A scrub hare bounded across the track and a Ruppell’s korhaan, endemic to the Namib, went kraak kraak as it walked across the veld. ‘Around here we call them desert frogs because of that call,’ he said.
At the end of a winding road, he stopped to show us some bushman paintings in a cave that was a short scramble up a rocky path. The paintings of human figures were some 3000 years old, made with animal fat and blood, ochre for colour and ostrich egg as a fixative.
Soon the sun was hanging low in the sky. As Athan struggled to put the obstinate Land Rover into low range for the last climb up a rocky track, we clambered out and walked the last 50 metres. We tracked the bright yellow ball as it hit the horizon, but that’s never the best part of a Namibian sunset. You have to wait until the sun spills its paint box into the surrounding sky after it has set.
From our rocky perch, it was as if we could see forever across the parched, flat landscape to faraway mountains. By then Athan had coaxed the Landie to the top of the koppie and was pouring sundowners. Ah, nothing better than a gin and tonic to wash away the dust of a day in the desert.
Note: I was a guest of Little Kulala for two nights, but had free rein to write what I chose. I paid for all travel costs.
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Note: I was a guest of Little Kulala for two nights, but had free rein to write what I chose. I paid for all travel costs.
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