Day Nine:  (Part One) Desert Camp, Sossusvlei, Namibia

Waking up before sunrise with the light of dawn coming up over the mountains in the cool fresh air of the desert is exciting and invigorating.  We dressed warmly but in layers as we knew that as the sun rose in the sky, so would the temperature.

Alesa and I each had a piece of bread and cheese, hers with a bit of chicken from last night's BBQ, to hold us off until lunch which wouldn't be for about 7 hours.  I made a quick cup of camp coffee (using a paper towel as a filter) and Alesa had her lemon Rooibus tea (still fighting a cold she'd picked up in Dubai, poor thing).

We met up with the group at the head office where there were 3 open air safari vehicles with 3 guides to take us into the famous red sand dunes of Namib Naukluft Park.  Thank heaven they had big warm blankets to wrap around us because the wind was bitter cold as they drove off at about 45 km. an hour to get us to our destination.

It took about an hour to get to our first stop at the edge of a sand dune where the guides proceeded to tell us about the life of the desert - the snakes, spiders, small rodents and other desert dwellers.  It was amazing how they could spot the tiniest tracks that the untrained eye wouldn't even recognize as tracks at all.  One such track was that of a spider - the Dancing White Lady Spider.  

One guide spotted the entry to their underground burrow by an unusual few dots in the sand near a grass tuft.  He then lifted up a little patch of sand, exposing a burrow.  The other guide took a long thin poker-like stick and slid it almost 30 cm. at an angle down into the burrow until it stopped and he said, "There is the nest.".  He then bent over and proceeded to dig, sifting through the sand with his hands until voila!  The sleeping spider lay still in the sand looking almost like it was dead - all twisted up and motionless.  Once everyone had a chance to see it sleeping, the guide took the stick and gently touched it.  Immediately, it lept up and started to scurry away.  It was about the size of the end knuckle of a finger with average length of legs.  It was white and the guide told us it was venomous and ate its mate after coupling, similar to the Black Widow.

After showing us a few more tracks and explaining unusual desert habits, we got back in the vehicles and headed down a dry river bed between the burnt orange dunes that stood between 200  and 340 m. high and went on for miles and miles.  Formed by sand and soil coming down the Orange River to the ocean Coast and then being brought back up by the ocean waves and blown at from both sides by the East and West winds, the dunes are a unique phenomena in the world and are a stunningly magnificent sight to behold.

We could not possibly see them all as they stretched over such a vast array of land that seemed to go on forever (this was becoming the standard for our trip - endless vista of staggering proportions!).  We did stop at one dune and, the next thing I knew, we were all out of our vehicles and headed for one of the dunes and starting to climb it!  It was now about 10:15 and the heat of the day was coming upon us.  We just followed each other one after another and climbed up the ridge of the dune.  We stopped a few times to catch our breath and marvelled at the height and the beauty of our surroundings.

On either side of the dunes was an area called "Deadvlei" as it was literally where the forest had died from drought and the remains were a salt-white blanket with Tim Burtonesque trees scattered intermittently over the terrain.  It was completely surreal looking and it was hard not to think that we were on a Hollywood movie set but actually in a massive park in Africa!

   
The sand of the dune, itself, was velvet in texture and cool to the touch.  If you did not stay on the path of the person in front of you, you risked slipping off and sliding with the very delicate makeup of the sand - it slid away easily and you could just slide away before you realized it!   It took us about 30 minutes to make our way to almost the top and then the guide suggested we stop and make our way down.  How?  Literally, straight down the side of the dune by carefully digging in your heels first, leaning back and doing a bit of a "slide" step as you almost "danced" straight down the dune!

It was scary, exciting and exhilarating, all at the same time.   If you looked down to the people standing at the bottom of the dune, it made your stomach jump as they only looked a few inches high and you realized just how far up you were.  Some brave souls made their way down quite quickly. Others, like me, took more time.  I had to stop because of the burn in my legs of muscles I forgot I had and also I had to make sure I only looked at my shadow or my fear of heights kicked in and I freaked myself out!  

Kudos to Rita who managed to make it down the dune with the help of the guide as her fear  of heights is even worse than mine and she was frozen with fear.  What an amazing accomplishment to challenge yourself and overcome that fear to actually climb a sand dune in Naukluft Park in Africa and descend straight down its side!  Yay!!!!

We then headed back (with our shoes full of the velvet sand acting as great orthotics!) the 1.1 km. to the waiting vehicles and shared our accomplishment with our fellow travellers who decided it was a bit too much for them.

The drive back was much quieter as we were hot and tired from all of the activity and copious amounts of information about the desert we were trying to absorb.  One last stop before home was in an area on the gentle slopes of golden sand dunes where there were perfect barren circles amid the low lying green shrubs.  Funnily enough, just as I wondered out loud to my seatmate, Eileen, what the circles in the scrub were, the driver explained that a German scientist had taken samples of the sand with the shrub and samples of the sand without the shrub and found that in the shrubless sand were termites that fed off the roots of the shrubs thereby making the land above barren.  How they happened to do it in perfect circles is still a mystery, I think?!

We finally arrived back at our desert campsites around 1:00 pm exhausted and starving.  I'm not sure what the others did for lunch but I chopped up the remaining potatoes from the BBQ for home fries.  Then I cut up the leftover steak I had from the Joe's Beerhouse night and finished cooking the too rare meat.  I pan-fried some bread for toast and threw on some eggs and served Alesa and myself a fabulous camp breakfast of steak and eggs!   Accompanied by an ice cold beer.....you couldn't get much better than that! :)

A nap was definitely in order and we needed to renew our energy as we were told by the travel agent to be ready to go by 5:15 pm and this time on a surprise adventure....

Stay tuned for Part Two.....it will prove to be an extravaganza of surprises!......JT