Red Dunes of Sossusvlei

If you have, so far, been curious enough as to google Namibia, I’m sure pictures of big red dunes were the first to appear… if it didn’t occur to you before, but now you just can’t contain your curious self, go ahead, google Namibia,  I’ll make a pause and wait for you to come back……
Now that’s  Sossusvlei, and that is exactly where we were headed. The drive form Windhoek is about 5 hours. The roads in Namibia are pretty decent by African standards. In fact, our biggest trouble came from our GPS which insisted in marking turns where there was absolutely no road. Anyway, after ignoring the GPS a couple of times and just staying on the real road we made it to Sossusvlei Lodge. I have never been a camping person, until now. Although, I’m afraid most people wouldn’t’ consider this to be really camping…. Specially not those parked outside the lodge with tents settled on the roofs of their vans… Still, I think this luxury camping scheme is the way forward in my relationship with nature.

The place (luckily as most of the places we visited) was just idyllic. We could sit on the porch of our tent, looking to a vast field, watching springboks crossing, with majestic dunes as background. We took a quad bike tour through the bushes to admire the beauty of the place from within and came back for dinner, which was a never-ending buffet with a mix of exotic and common meals.





The next day, we woke up early (very early, the kind of early in which it takes my brain about half an hour to start processing things) to make our way to the dunes as soon as the park opened and avoid the burning heat of the midday sun.  The dunes in Sossusvlei have this iconic red colour because the sand they are formed of contains great amounts of iron. Every dune in Sossus (we are friends now u know) has a number or a name, dune #45 being the most famous one for no apparent reason. We went up Big Mamma, and boy it was big. You don’t really realize it until you start going up, and up, and up… and it is sand so it’s not an easy walk, but once you are at the top, everything gets a new meaning, we could have stayed there for hours, just contemplating the beauty of the place.

Coming down is way more fun. You don’t actually go down the same way you came up (which is following the side of the dune), no, you go down skipping through the middle of it. I wasn’t so sure about how fun it would be at first, it looked quite steep and I’m not exactly the most gracious and agile person in the world. But after watching Chris, I decided to try, it was almost like floating, and once you start you get all the way down in seconds. Chris actually recommends to try jumping forward.
Once down, our guide had prepared a beautiful breakfast in the open, which we really enjoyed, and so did a couple (more like seven) of bees which were feasting on our fruit. We then proceeded to the even more dramatic scenery of Deadvlei.

Deadveli is within the Namib-Naukluft park. For some reason in that specific area of the park the sand, combined with the river that used to pass some thousands of years ago, formed some kind of white mud that solidified and turned into clay. The trees that had grown there died, but the dried trunks remain. So what you get is white floor, with shiny red/orange walls and dead trunks spread all over. It’s a unique view and can be a little creepy, if you consider that some trunks can look like petrified tortured souls (or maybe I just have a really unlimited imagination).   Anyway, it is definitely like nothing you have ever seen before, or will see anywhere else in the world.

We went back to the lodge for lunch and a little rest before our afternoon excursion to the Sesriem Canyon. An enclosed canyon is a great contrast with the openness of the sand valleys, but it might be just as beautiful. I guess the fact that it is somehow hidden in the Earth gives it a special charm. It offers you a relaxing atmosphere and a refreshing swim…that is of course if, as opposed to me, you loved ice cold water.

                                  


We were back in the lodge just in time to see the sunset from the central tower and a special dinner. I had booked a bush dinner for two because I saw the pictures on the lodge’s website and thought it would be a nice experience. The pictures on the website, of course, were amazing, but I didn’t allow myself to have big expectations since pictures are usually better than reality (when they are trying to sell something). Not in this case, as we would discover later. The guide picked us up on a safari cart and drove around for a little, telling Chris (who had absolutely no idea what was going on) that we were hunting our own dinner… which, actually would have been really cool, now that I think about it… We stopped next to a huge rock and the guide told us to walk around it. The scene was just taken out of some Hollywood movie, I don’t think I can even describe it accurately.  Tenths of candles decorating around a private buffet and a table set for two in the middle of the Namibian bush. If you happen to be in Namibia for any kind of a special occasion you must absolutely consider this option. The lodge’s staff went beyond that extra mile you make sure everything is right at the top of perfection and you leave with the most unforgettable night printed in your memory forever. I can’t think of a better ending.