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Namibian Dunes

by Erik Olsen (RSS feed) on Sep 13th 2006 at 12:01PM

Something in me wants to make a dumb joke about "The Spice", perhaps to drop a name like Muad'Dib and see how many people get it. My suspicions are that we don't have a HUGE number of Dune fans out there, but I'll have to confess I was a passionate, rabid devotee of the Frank Herbert series. All of which leads me to this article from Namibia, which has nothing to do with worms or oil or Muadib, but rather with sand, large, lovely mountains of sand.

The writer Joan Scobey takes us to the Namib Desert, a long, thin strip, some 120 miles wide, along Namibia's 800-mile Atlantic coast between South Africa and Angola. There, she dines on oysters, rock lobsters and fresh asparagus and gazes up at the Southern Cross in a rather wonderful sounding journey published in the Washington times. I confess to a somewhat painful twinge of jealousy as I read this, as a friend of mine, travel writer Andrew Tarica once told me that Namibia is one of the best places he's ever been. One interesting bit I gleaned from the piece here is that this region is populated by Germans, who arrived to Africa rather late to the region during the great colonization boom (the whole unification thing preoccupied them for a while in the late 1800's). So, all's I got to say is, check it.

Filed under: History, Learning, Stories, Africa, Angola, Namibia

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Willy Sep 13th 2006 12:48PM

I spent a few weeks traveling through namibia in 1999. It was amazing. Somewhat different from much of Southern Africa, Namibia has highly modern urban areas peppered throughout a wide, vast country.

From Zambia, I rode a dug-out canoe across the border into Namibia, which was lots of fun. It cost me 50 cents, and that kid probably ate for a week from that donation. After that, we traveled throughout the Namib desert, which is beautiful and stark, and yet has amazing roads carved through it (thanks to the Dutch). Getting around in this country is easier than in most other African nations.

FYI -- Namibia isn't ideal for game-viewing -- most of the game parks are wide, open, flat, salt pans, and the ellies are mere specks on the horizon. However, Swakopmund is a quaint, bizarre-o gingerbread town on Africa's west coast, replete with Bavarian pastries, fine coffees, and road signs in German. It's a must-visit.

Swak is also near the sand dunes, where we sandboarded (http://www.namibian.org/travel/adventure/sandboarding.htm). Certainly the most fun I had in Namibia, sandboarding down the dunes is like innertubing down steep hills of fine, red snow. You can reach 30mph on the way down. Even if you have to trudge back up the hill, you know it's worth it, because it's so much damn fun.

I'd highly recommend a visit to this country if ever you get the chance. It's stable, safe, well-laid-out, and the people are friendly, too. More than anything, it's gorgeous.