It was a long drive on gravel roads from Windhoek to Sesriem, the gateway to Sossusvlei (a desert pan) and the apricot-red sand dunes, including the famous Dune 45 — so-called due to it being 45km from the camp. Along the way, we stopped off for apple pie at the ‘village’ (read: petrol station and cafe-bar) of Solitaire. I don’t know how Moose, the owner, got to become the apple pie king of Africa–he’s in all the guidebooks–and yet there’s really nothing else around for miles. Along the desolate roads, we were lucky enough to pass a small convoy of top-secret disguised Mercedes cars being testing on the otherwise empty desert roads. Car manufacturers often test their forthcoming models in extreme environments around the world, presumably to confirm their reliability and durability before public launch. The motoring press pays good money for candid photos of test cars, but unfortunately, none of us could get to our cameras in time as they zoomed past.

As far as I can tell, Sossusvlei, Hidden Vlei and Dead Vlei are basically desert lakes of old, now completely dry, but nonetheless picturesquely nestling within the sand dunes. The last 5km prior to arriving at Sossusvlei made for an interesting drive as the road became completely replaced by pure sand. I’d never driven on sand before and really enjoyed the effect. In the pan, we saw a snake and lots of curious, running, burrowing desert bugs before having picnic under the shade of a tree, away from the burning sun. Once the heat had calmed down a bit, we walked half-way up a big dune to watch the purple sun set.

The next day, we arose at some ungodly hour to drive, along with everyone else, at nearly double the park speed limit to have a chance of scaling Dune 45 to watch the sunrise. Honestly, it’s so silly: There are two gates to go through to get into the national park. The outer gate opens at 06:30 (after sunrise) and the inner one at 05:30 (just before sunrise). Naturally, in between the two gates is a single campsite, owned by the national park which charges a fortune to stay there, because staying there provides the only chance of seeing the sunrise from the top of a dune. It’s really cheeky — by staying at their campsite (at double the cost of external sites) you get a one hour headstart on the masses. But what you don’t get is enough time from the time the gate opens to drive at the speed limit to get atop a dune!

With Claire’s skillful driving we got to the base of Dune 45 with just a little time to spare and so started our ascent up the mountain of sand. I honestly cannot remember the last time I felt so exhausted. Imagine climbing up steep sand–two steps forward, one step back–before having breakfast and adequate water. By the top, my heart was pounding so strongly, my lungs were so dusty and, sitting slumped on the knife-edge of the top of the dune, I could hardly lift my head to take in the sunrise that I had fought so hard to see.

Once my body had returned to a somewhat normal condition, we got to admire mother nature’s morning theatre and made a running descent — which took all of about 30 seconds taking large jumps straight down the slopes. We’ve got some brilliant videos to show you of our descent, but alas Africa is not quite up for us uploading to Youtube just yet! (I’ll let you know once I can get videos working, of course).

By the way, the last photo that you see in the gallery below is not of the sun, but the moon. Neither of us had ever seen it so close before, it was amazing — I wish you were there to see for yourself.

[Show as slideshow]