Day in the Dunes and Old Forrest

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We saw the Namibian Desert. Our first stop was at Dune 45, which is located on Sossusvlei Road. The Dune is 150m tall, and is 45m from Sesriem and Sossusvlei. Again the walk up the dune was painful. The wind was blowing so hard that the people’s tracks in front of me were covered quickly. This is really too bad because walking in other people’s tracks make the hike up a very tall sand dune a lot easier. The view from the top was okay; the best part is that I can say that I climbed one of the oldest sand dunes in the world.
The really fun part was running down the back side of the dune. Sylvia and I started running down at the same time, she was a few feet in front of me and I ate her sand. I had to stop running until she was half way down the dune because she was throwing up so much sand. We sat down and looked back up at the group at the top of the dune and what we saw was breath taking. The moon was full sitting right at the top of the dune. As our group walked pass the moon it looked like it was sitting right on their head. It was really cool.
After Dune 45 we went up the road to talk a 5km walk to an area called Dead V lei, which is an area that the limestone has harden and looked like a white lake in the middle of sand. At the initial look it was sort of disappointing. Beautiful but I was expecting more. It wasn’t until walking around in the actual limestone area with all the trees that have been dead for 800 years that I truly understood the magic of the place. Jen and I took our time taking pictures with the tree, and sad to admit climbing them. A word of caution, 800 year old trees give really bad splinters.
The next day we went to Fish River Canyon. The canyon measures 160km in length, 27km wide, and is 550m deep. I was told that this is the second largest canyon in the world, the first largest is America’s Grand Canyon! In truth I wish I would have seen Fish River Canyon before the Grand Canyon because there really is no comparison. The highlight of this stop was our tour leader and truck driver had set up a wine and cheese party for us to enjoy while the sun set over the canyon. It was nice end to the day!

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Photos

Hard Wind
Climbing up Dune 45

Holding the moon
Looking back at the group still on the top of the dune

Bugs
This was the quickest bug that I have seen.

I'm a tree
This head stand took me some time

Birds Nest
This was the only nest we saw

Bad Person
I feel bad that I climbed an 800 year old tree

800 Year Old Forest
Dead Vlei to 5km to get here

Fish River Canyon
Pretty Flowers

Holding the Wind
This took me 20 minutes to build!

Bugs
Our truck wine tasting was great.

I'm a tree
I have no idea what this thing was but it was the size of my fist!