Sossusvlei, Namibia
Throughout our trip, Alison kept saying, “If the sand of Namibia gets in your shoes, you will always return.” If that is true we are all going to be back here a lot!!!!! We drove from Okonjima to the Eros airport at Windhoek. After revealing our weights and having our 7 kg luggage allowance weighed we were divided into groups and seated (in specific locations) in 3 Cesna aircraft. (I would bet that 7 kg/person translates to the least amount of luggage transported for a Toto group ever!) We had 3 young pilots who have obviously worked together for a while. Part way into the hour long flight across the desert, the pilots started turning and swooping around each other in different formations. Maybe they were providing the sparse residential population below with their daily air show. It certainly made for great pictures! We flew to Sossusvlei in the southern Namib desert to arrive at the Sossusvlei Lodge. The accommodations were quite beautiful but we were immediately whisked off in order to make our ‘sundowner’ appointment. We were transported across the plains to the nearby mountains where bubbly and nibbles were waiting on a linen covered table. We watched the sun go down over the expansive desert view while perched on rocks taking thousands of photographs. The accommodations were very interesting. The cottages were made of cement but there was no roof and half the walls were missing from the bedroom – a tent top was placed there instead. It was like camping for people who don’t like camping. The trip into the sand dunes was amazing. This is the oldest desert in the world and the dunes are spectacular. We left early in the morning to make sure that the sun was in a perfect position to photograph the dunes (and to make our mid-morning flight back to Windhoek). The dunes are a deep red colour so the dark shadows provided by the low sun result in a sharp contrast making for amazing images. A group of us hiked up one of the dunes in extremely high wind conditions creating a new cosmetic surgery procedure: whole body macrodermabrasion. Sand was everywhere! We also visited a dried up lake bed with a white salty crust. The dead acacia trees and the surrounding red dunes make for stunning photographs. Back in Windhoek, we went for lunch at Joe’s Beer House. It is restaurant/watering hole featuring an eclectic mixture of tchotchkes amassed by the titular ex-pat owner. We then checked into a nearby game reserve for our last night together and hit the showers (individually). There was a small scale reproduction of the Namib Desert on our shower floor after we finished. We enjoyed a Bushman’s Fondue (game meat cooked in large vats of oil heated on red hot coals) as we made our tearful goodbyes.
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