Sandunes and Safari in Namibia
So continuing from where I left off in Rwanda after visiting the mountain gorillas, we flew from Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, after an overnight stay in the airport in Johannesburg. From there we stayed a couple of nights at a hotel outside the city before continuing onto Namibia’s main attraction, the giant sand dunes in Sossusvlei.
The plane we took surrounded by some fog at one of our refueling stops
To get to the hotel in Sossusvlei we flew on a plane and landed on a strip in the middle of the desert. You haven’t been to the middle of nowhere until you’ve been to these sand dunes. There is absolutely nothing around except for red sand and a couple of ostriches. We spent a couple of nights at the hotel and it was amazing. We climbed up a sand dune called “Big Daddy” which is the biggest sand dune in the national park. Be pre-warned that it’s best to climb the dunes as early as possible, but you can’t enter the park until sunrise, so we got up super early. Once you drive to the base of the sand dune, you have a long climb ahead of you through loose sand until you reach the top. From there you can see miles in each direction and admire the sand dunes from a different angle. Don’t worry, the way down from the top is much less strenuous than the way up. Our family turned it into a race to see who could run down the sand dune the fastest.
A tree from the salt flat at the bottom of Big Daddy
On another day, we decided to take a hot air balloon up in order to get a different perspective of the desert. If you’re ever planning a trip to this area of the world, I would highly recommend a hot air balloon. We took off just after sunrise and the views were absolutely stunning. After we landed the hot air balloon ride we had a cute breakfast in the middle of the desert.
Desert sunrise from our hot air balloon
Besides these fun activities, one of my favorite things about being in the middle of nowhere was that there was no light pollution. This meant that when you went to bed at night the stars were absolutely incredible. Our hotel had an option where you could stay on the roof of your room for the night and fall asleep under the stars. I took advantage of this opportunity and it was incredible. There’s something about just gazing up at all the constellations that’s super peaceful. Since we went in July, which is during the Namibian winter, it was quite cold so I slept with my down jacket on and a hot water bottle with lots of blankets, but it was totally worth it!
From the sand dunes, we flew north up the coast to get to a tented camp where we went on a safari. Flying over Namibia was an experience because there was absolutely nothing around. Seriously, you would think I’m joking but there was a set of 3 tents leftover from a mining camp and the rest was desert for hundreds of miles. When we finally made it to our tented camp we came to discover quite a problem. Since Namibia was in the middle of a drought, the wildlife around the camp, especially the elephants, were struggling to find water. The elephants had apparently gotten mad that the humans were “stealing” their water and dug down to the pipes. The elephants then proceeded to disconnect and tug on the pipes in order to get the water inside. As a result, the camp had no water for a couple of days while we were there. I can tell you it's quite an experience to round the corner in one of the safari trucks to see a herd of elephants all tugging on some black water pipes.
One of the elephants pulling on the pipe
I remember one afternoon after not being able to shower for a couple of days, my parents texted me to quickly hurry over to their room since they finally had water. I was so scared it would shut off again, I didn’t even take anything with me and had to put my dirty clothes back on after my shower. Besides this unfortunate circumstance, I had a great time on Safari, and we saw lots of cool animals. We even got to witness the elephants pulling and dragging the pipes in the riverbank.
Our last stop in Namibia was a more popular national park for seeing animals: Etosha. There we really got to experience the true range of wildlife and saw everything from cheetahs, leopards, and giraffes. This part of the journey was quite relaxing, even if we had to get up before dawn every day. Anyway, that pretty much wraps up this country. I hope you enjoyed and will continue to follow me onto the next country: Madagascar!
One of my favorite safari photos I took