9 February 2010
Full on. Those words just didn’t cover it today. The day started at 4:45am, we packed up and dress and then had to push start Helena (the truck) in the dark. During the night a springbok had come and had her baby behind the truck and he was still there in the morning.
We jumped on the truck and headed out for Sossusflei and the highest dunes in the world. I managed to climb almost to the top of dune 45 to watch the sunrise. Climbing up a giant sand dune after camping for three days is possibly the hardest thing I have ever done. It’s like you take two steps forward and one step back because you keep sliding backwards in the sand. Not to mention your shoes get completely full of the stuff.
After we came down from the dune, we had breakfast around the truck and then drove into the desert for about 15 minutes. There were about 20 of us and we were herded onto the back of a ute, standing up and taken out to meet the desert bushman. The bushman taught us all about the desert and the animals that live there. It was hot and this experience only lasted for an hour, but even after half an hour the water in my bottle was too hot to drink and I was left feeling a little dizzy from the heat. Sossusflei, mean “the place where people disappear” and we got to see the part of the desert that was used in the film, “The Cell”, which was really freaky. This area caught between two massive sand dunes is called the “Valley of the dead trees” and it was a surreal experience being there, almost like being trapped in a Salvador Dali painting.
We got back on the ute and taken back to the truck. We got on the truck and drove for a further hour and a half to a rest stop. We then drove for another three hours to the absolute middle of nowhere, where we pitched tents and set up camp. On the way to our bush camp we saw warthogs, Zebras and a Jackal, we also crossed the tropic of Capricorn and we all got out to take pictures with the sign. An important travel milestone.
When we got to the camp, the area was swarming with insects, including butterflies, which were beautiful and landed all over us. Our tour leader Sarah was for some reason terrified of butterflies and we all teased her, she in turn teased me about my fear of scorpions. “Hey! At least scorpions can sting and bite and are poisonous, meaning it’s a legitimate fear!”
While we were eating dinner a little desert fox came to check us out, this seemed to be the only animal in Namibia with no fear of humans and he got quite close to us.
At about 8pm a strong wind swept through the camp and blew the butterflies away. We were then treated to an amazing lightning storm on the horizon, I hadn’t seen anything like it in my life and will never forget the multiple bolt shooting into the ground. We all went to be in our tents, and it wasn’t long before the storm was on top of us. At times I felt as if the tent would lift up with us in it. Quite an experience feeling completely powerless and insignificant against mother nature.
Glad to be heading for Swakopmund tomorrow and a city with a hotel and real beds!!!!!
