Sand Dunes Sossusvlei

Today, we go into the heart of the desert, with its enormous sand dunes. It takes a good half hour to walk up, slightly less to slide down on your bottom.

The guide books say you must see this in all its magnificence at dawn, so we dutifully get up at 0530. However, we get to the gate, and it's closed. Security guard insists it's only open at 0715, and we are there at 0620 😞. So we wait, and in the meantime, children have breakfast in the back.
Then, at 0700, there is a bit of action, as an official in a military styled uniform orders me to move the car forward to the stop line. I try to do so. "Move back, you are over the stop line!" I can't see it, so he guides me. He then pulls out a note-taking board and says, "You are number 1, where are you from?, name? . Ok, you go in now and pay later when you leave. Strange, but Ok.

So we are off along a beautiful tarmac road and arrive at the dunes 30m later.

The dunes themselves don't impress me that much at first, but they grow on me as we climb up, and even more so when we reach a mixed landscape of dunes, died out salt lakes and long since dead trees.

Flo and the kids, and Cedric and Audwyn can't get enough of dune climbing , so I let them carry on and sit down to watch them climb. I must have lasted 5 minutes before I fell asleep 😴. (thank goodness I was in the shade of a dead tree). I woke up an hour later. I just hoped they didn't go back without me, but that seemed unlikely. I walk back, and I bump into a driver who asks if I want to go to Seseriem for half an hour. Why not? It turns out to be super lovely and interesting. A real oasis, or so I thought. Not a fantom organa, but rather a salt lake. Surprisingly, 2 oryx were hanging out there , and they seemed unphased by myself and two others being there. After taking g a few photos, the driver is back, and I head to where the camper van is parked. Still no sign of the family, quelle surprise 😉.Read more