After a few hours of driving through canyons and the desert, we arrived at the national park. We met a Dutch couple, Beerd and Michele, and invited them to share our campsite. It ended up being a great idea because it was great fun having all 5 of us to hang out... And we were able to use their cups and plates, too!
After getting settled in and making veggie burgers on Tuesday evening, we all watched our first sunset over the dunes. Then Maya and Ian and I went over to the staff quarters and hung out with a bunch of the Namibian workers. They were so much fun and it was nice to escape from the tourist-route for a couple of hours. We woke up before sunrise on Wednesday and headed into the park. We climbed Dune 45 and watched the sunrise from over the massive red dunes.
Then we headed to Sossusvlei and Dead Vlei, which are valleys formed at the base of huge dunes. In Sossusvlei, water collects in the pan every 5 years or so, after a rare big rainfall has caused the river there to run again. Dead Vlei, as its name suggests, is cut off now and so water never collects, as is apparent by the stark dead tree trunks littering the pan. Some of the others spent an hour climbing the biggest dune, while I spent time just wandering the pan. It was breathtaking.
We then went back to our campsite for lunch and a rest. We went back to the park in the evening for sunset. We brought wine and found our own dune to hike, just the 5 of us, totally away from other visitors. We watched the sun set and the moon rise from the top of the dune, then thoroughly enjoyed running down the dune at full-speed.
We then went back to the campsite before going to bed early, exhausted. On Thursday morning we woke up early and drove back to Swakop, dropped the car, and hitched to Windhoek. We stayed with Ian at his friend's flat, and we went out to a club called Funky Lab :)
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