Southern Africa - Part3: Sossusvlei

**Today we decided to depart a bit later since Luederitz Airport (FYLZ) is known for its coastal morning fog. After takeoff we again dove down into the canyon following its turns and bends just a few feet above the ground. ****Since the canyon is more than 160 km long we had to climb out of it eventually turning west direct Luederitz. While overflying the desert in not more than 50ft we could spot oryx as well as ostriches and arrived at Luederitz Airport just before a sandstorm approached. Despite being the only major airport in the radius of hundreds of miles Luederitz is uncontrolled. We already ordered refuelling during our approach, however the guy responsible had to finish his card game with the rest of the staff first leaving us standing outside in an approaching dust storm. When he finally arrived we had to pay before he started refuelling the plane - luckily we had an engine monitoring system where we could easily estimate how much fuel we needed to fill up the tanks. ** After refuelling we walked to the deserted terminal where the rest of the staff was continuing their card game. We filled out the required forms, paid our landing fees in a small office where a police officer was sitting who had to stop watching his favourite TV - Show and continued our journey. Since the last few days our flap system was only working occasionally we where this time not able to retract our flaps after landing, however we luckily only landed with flaps 10 due to the long runway in Luederitz. We decided to continue anyway since flying with flaps 10 would only minimal affect the cruising behaviour. Just after takeoff we turned right overflying the deserted town of Kolmanskop and the city of Luederitz before turning further north to follow the coastline of Namibia. We had a spectacular view of the Namib desert with it’s steep dunes ending directly in the ocean. Overflying a ship wreckage and a huge colony of seals we turned abeam Sossusvlei east to fly in the shortest way possible over the Namib Desert. It is an amazing feeling to see those red sand dunes stretching from horizon to horizon impossible to navigate without GPS. Furthermore in the area of Sossusvlei flights are to be flown in flight levels on standard QNH and have to broadcast position reports regularly. Approaching Sossusvlei we did a short scenic flight overflying Deadvlei, Sossusvlei and Dune 45 before landing on our Lodge’s private gravel airstrip. What first felt like a privilege, we discovered by looking at the charts to be normal since there are more airports than planes in this area.