A guided excursion to Sandwich Harbour (Namibia) promises to be a thrilling experience that will also bring moments of peace and silence while admiring this natural wonder of the Namibian coast. On a scale ranging from the serenity to adrenaline, it has everything to please!
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| Sandwich Harbour Namibia |
Sandwich Harbour, Namibia. This unique place, where the dunes seem to fall into the ocean, is located not far from Walvis Bay. Local travel agencies arrange interesting excursions and rides along these beautiful dunes and shores. Tours are not cheap - about US $ 150 per person for half a day.
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| Sandwich Harbour Namibia |
The more economical option is to take a guide and go with him in your car. Of course, the car must match the route. Sandwich Harbour is fantastic, incredible, but... disastrous. Not every SUV can be passed, not to mention the usual puzoterki. You need a real "rogue" with a low gear and differential locks.
You can even without a guide, completely independently, but it will be an extreme option and in every sense - AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Having decided, let's go! To get to Sandwich Harbour, you need to get to the end of the D1986 road and continue along the coast - the track follows directly at the water's edge, but sometimes it loops several hundred meters inland.
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| Sandwich Harbour Namibia |
The area from the salt mines to where the dunes begin on the beach is a concession. The cars of the concessionaires enter from 10-11 to 13-14 hours and return in the late afternoon. To ride these dunes, you need to get ahead of the concession cars.
The first kilometers along the coast are easy. There are many fishermen here, the risks of getting lost are small. Then you have to be careful on the route. Salt marshes near the dunes are tempting to ride, but they are insidious, even experienced drivers get stuck in them. Also, resist the temptation to drive through wet sand assuming it is dense. The surface only seems solid, in fact, under the sand colonies of mussels are hiding - holes into which it is easy to fall by wheels. Such places can be identified visually - they look like whitish spots below the tide line, like weeds on the sand. And there is also the likelihood of getting bogged down in a swamp.
But Sandwich Harbour (Namibia) is not a place to be stuck in a hole! After all, while you get out of one trap, you will fall into another - the tide. The last section of the path, in Lange Wand, is especially dangerous - there, at high tide, the ocean comes close to the sheer dunes. If you arrive at the wrong time, the ocean will "close" you, cut off the path without a chance to leave and flood the bay.
You need to calculate the ideal time to travel. It is about 60 km from Walvis Bay to the harbour itself (the destination of the route), it will take a couple of hours to pass them, and if you ride along the dunes, then even longer. This means that you need to leave the city 3 hours before low tide in order to pass Langewand in an hour to the minimum water level. Then, in the bay itself, you can fearlessly spend 2-2.5 hours and have time to get out before the water floods these places. And it will take two hours on the way back.
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| Sandwich Harbour Namibia |
There are many stories when tourists, having miscalculated the time, fell into the trap of the tide. At best, unlucky travelers managed to climb high dunes on foot to pick up a phone signal and call for help. The cost of rescue is high. It includes the cost of using a helicopter - after all, usually lost tourists have no idea where they are, cannot name their exact location among hundreds of square kilometers of identical dunes. You will also have to pay for the transport and labor necessary to rescue the cars stuck in Sandwich Harbour captivity. And in the end, the rental office still rolls out a bill for car repairs and a fine, since ordinary insurance does not include driving on the dunes and coastal sands. In the worst case (and more often), drivers simply lost their cars in the bay.
This is another important point: before going to Sandwich Harbour in Namibia, you need to make sure that your car INSURANCE INCLUDES sands and dunes. And that in the contract with the rental company there is no clause prohibiting this and similar places.
Tip: There are dedicated dune riding areas between Swakop and Walvis Bay where you can practice before the dangerous road to Sandwich Harbour and test your vehicle's rollover limits.
quired for camping.