Lady in Red

Expat Living's LARA SAGE reflects on the marvel of our planet's endurance as seen in the Namib desert, the oldest on earth.

A country of astonishing contrasts, Namibia is celebrated for its infinite blue skies, vast open landscapes, and enormous sand dunes that run along the Atlantic coastline of Africa. Time has chiseled away this landscape over millennia, as both wind and water have patiently molded the valleys, gorges, mountains, and deserts. I had the chance to witness all of these incredible features on a recent visit to three destinations in the Namib.

Part 1: Sossusvlei

Namibia encompasses an area one and a half times the size of France, yet with a mere two million people. In the intimate camps of luxury safari operator Wilderness Safaris, you'll hardly see a soul, making them a fitting place to connect with yourself or your loved ones; a place to restore or reflect.

From Windhoek International Airport in the Namibian capital, we flew in a small plane - with a pilot named Maverick, no less! to an area in the southern part of the Namib Desert called Sossusvlei. Light aircraft flights are an underpinning element of luxury travel; they allow you to cover expansive distances to reach remote and unique settings. In this instance, each flight we took was astonishingly scenic. It's unfathomable that one country could showcase such a variety of landscapes. On the way to Sossusvlei, the sky and sand offered ever-changing and impressive scenes for the duration of the journey, until we eventually dipped down towards the undulating red sands.

From the ideally situated luxury camp of Little Kulala, you take a trip through the corridor into the NamibNaukluft National Park, where towering dunes cover an area of 20,000 square kilometres. This is a place where you can't help being intrigued by the geological conversation. To sum up; the desert is a result of transportation of sand by wind from the Kalahari. The high quartz and iron content give it a rich red colour.