Katie's Very Excellent Adventure: Africa 2013: Day 4: Oh, Sandy....Baby!!

Another early morning. We woke up at 4:30 so we would have enough time to drive to the gate of Sossusvlei and get there when the gates opened at 6:30. After getting to the gate around 6:00, we waited half an hour for the gates to open. At least, that’s what we thought was going to happen. After waiting until 6:30, and then 6:45 and then 7:00, we finally realized that Namibia does daylight savings (while South Africa doesn’t) and we were actually an hour ahead of the rest of the country. We had a nice laugh about this as we boiled water for coffee and oatmeal in front of the closed gate while we waited for the real 6:30 to roll around. When the gate finally opened, we drove for a while in some of the craziest landscape I’ve ever been in - sand. When I think of sand dunes, (although the first thing that pops into my mind is John Travolta singing about Sandy in Grease), I usually picture the Prince of Egypt or Aladdin or some other movie that takes place in the desert. Although I’ve seen lots of sand in my day, it’s usually attached to an ocean. I have never seen anything like the dunes we were driving through. After a while, we got out of the car at the base of a really big dune and started the rather difficult climb up. Dune 45 is the most famous dune in Sossusvlei, and we were under the impression that we were climbing #45, but it turns out that it was only #40. Oh well. It was still tons of fun. It took us a little while to get to the top and then we just played around in all the sand running up and down the sides of the dune, burying ourselves, etc. After racing down the side of the dune, we got back in the car and drove to some salt/clay pans. The pan that we went to has been carved out by the Tsauchab River. As the river bed dries, it turns a kind of whitish - which you can see in the photos below. Although the river occasionally has water in it, water seldom reaches the pan we were on.

We started the 5k walk to the pans (because we didn’t want to pay for the ride) and ended up getting a free ride after some nice driver took pity on our tired, red and rather sweaty faces. The salt pan was really cool. It was just this huge flat white area in the middle of all these reddish dunes and then there were some dead trees standing randomly around the pan. The color contrasts between the sand, the trees, the pan and then the sky was so lovely. We walked across the pan, with only minor mirages due to the blazing sun and thought about climbing the one of the tallest sand dunes in the world called Big Daddy, but decided against it. We got another ride back to our car for R100 and an apple and then started the long drive to Windhoek so we could get Sam to her bus on time.

We made one stop along the way in Sesriem Canyon and got to walk around and climb on the rocks. It was a fun stop and it felt good to stretch our legs before the drive to Windhoek. The road we decided to take was a mountain pass and was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on. There were a couple rather scary moments where it looked like we were going to drive off the earth as we went up a hill and had a minor lake crossing (which was probably only a puddle, but with our tiny car, it seemed huge). We made it to Windhoek in the evening and found our hostel called the Cardboard Box. There, we were able to shower, cook on a real stove and meet some super awesome British guys who were driving from England to Cape Town in the coolest car ever. Both Thomas and Neil fell in love immediately and I must say my love for the Brits came shortly after.