Namib-Naukluft National Park
Interesting facts
- The park runs roughly 600 kilometres from north to south, between the Atlantic coast and the edge of the Great Escarpment.
- More moisture reaches the park as fog rolling in from the Atlantic than falls as rain.
- Big Daddy, one of the dunes around Sossusvlei, rises to roughly 325 metres and is among the highest dunes in the world.
- The name Sossusvlei mixes Afrikaans and Nama and roughly means a dead-end marsh, because the Tsauchab river ends there.
- The Tsauchab reaches the Sossusvlei pan only rarely; years can pass between floods that turn it into a lake.
- The sand of Dune 45, named for its distance from Sesriem, is thought to be about five million years old.
- The blackened dead trees of Dead Vlei, about two kilometres from Sossusvlei, are camel thorn trees.
- The strange desert plant Welwitschia grows in the northern part of the park, beyond the Swakop River, alongside quiver trees elsewhere.
- The Gobabeb research station, a centre for desert science, lies inside the park.
- The park began in 1907 as Game Reserve No. 3 under German colonial rule and reached its present size through several mergers, the last in 1986.
Why it is worth it
Namib-Naukluft is the park that holds the most famous desert landscapes in southern Africa. Covering nearly 50,000 square kilometres, it stretches from the Atlantic coast deep into the interior of Namibia, taking in part of the Namib — often described as the oldest desert on Earth — as well as the Naukluft mountains on its eastern side. Its history as a protected area goes back to 1907, when the German colonial administration declared a game reserve here; the modern boundaries were set in 1986, and for a time it was the largest game park in Africa.
The heart of the park for most visitors is the sea of dunes around Sossusvlei, a clay pan hemmed in by some of the tallest dunes in the world, in places more than 300 metres high. Their colour is the result of iron oxide coating the grains, and the older the dune, the deeper its orange and red. Nearby Dead Vlei is a white clay floor studded with the blackened skeletons of trees thought to have died around five and a half centuries ago — an image of stillness that photographers return to again and again. At the entrance to this part of the park, the Tsauchab river has carved the small Sesriem Canyon into the gravel plain.
Rain is scarce — around a hundred millimetres a year, mostly in late summer — yet the park is far from empty. Gemsbok and springbok cross the gravel plains, and jackals, hyenas, caracals and leopards live here too, along with geckos, snakes and other reptiles. On the coast, the lagoon of Sandwich Harbour, added to the park in 1941, draws large numbers of water birds where the dunes run straight into the sea.
Getting there
The park is huge, so the practical gateway depends on which part you visit. For the Atlantic side and Sandwich Harbour, the nearest town is Walvis Bay, and the nearest airport is Walvis Bay International (WVB). For Sossusvlei, most visitors fly into Hosea Kutako International Airport (WDH) near Windhoek and drive about 345 km to Sesriem, the park gate for the dune area — a drive of around four hours.
Plan your visit
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From the encyclopaedia
The Namib-Naukluft National Park is a national park in western Namibia, situated between the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and the edge of the Great Escarpment. It encompasses part of the Namib Desert, the Naukluft mountain range, and the lagoon at Sandwich Harbour. The best-known area of the park and one of the main visitor attractions in Namibia is Sossusvlei, a clay pan surrounded by dunes, and Sesriem, a small canyon of the Tsauchab. The desert research station of Gobabeb is situated within the park.
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