The Dunes at Sossusvlei

Unless I'm catching an early morning flight, there's not much that can get me out of bed at 4 in the morning. But after Chad's wake-up call at 4:30 Saturday morning, I found myself singing Billy Joel's "In the Middle of the Night" in my sleeping bag. After a quick cup of coffee and a biscuit (cookie), we were headed off see the sunrise over the famous sand dunes in Namib Naukluft National Park, home to Sossusvlei, Deadvlei and the apricot-colored sand dunes. First declared as a game reserve in 1907, the Park now covers 50,000 square km of one of the oldest deserts on earth, and is one of the largest national parks in Africa.

Driving from Camp Agama to the gates of the Park, we were surprised to see so many dark and ominous clouds but not a hint of sunlight at 6 in the morning. Unbelievably, it started to rain. In Chad's twenty years of experience taking groups to Sossusvlei, this was one of the only times he'd ever seen rain inside the dunes in the middle of winter (the dry season). At the first stop inside the park, where Chad normally stops for the group to take photos of the sun rising above the dunes and admire the contrasts and colors of the morning, we stood in the cold, misty morning and glared at the grayish sky, less than thrilled about our "unique" experience.

Moods quickly changed once we got to Dune 45, one of the more famous dunes and a popular one to climb (and a decent workout at 80 meters through sand). The sun started to come out and we really started to appreciate the clouds once we got climbing.


Though Dune 45 was only our first stop inside the park, my pictures stop here. Though I'd been warned to be extremely careful on the dunes with my camera, a bit of sand got caught inside the lens gears while I ran down the side of the dune (even though it was closed and sealed inside my pocked). I was crushed - I don't have photos of the most scenic parks of the trip - our climb of the Crazy Dune (the highest in the world at 388 meters high) and Deadvlei, the surrealistic-looking pan with camel thorn trees over 1000 years old.