Surreal landscapes, red dunes and microlighting – Namibia Part 3

click on the images in this post to see larger…

Our third major stop in our tour of Namibia was to see the famous red sand dunes at sossusvlei (Namib Rand Nature Reserve). We stayed inside the park at Sossusvlei Dune Lodge where we each had luxury eco rooms on stilts (see the sunset at the lodge photo right). Most of the fun was at Deadvlei where we took photos of the surreal dead camelthorn trees with the dunes behind them. Every time I see photos of them though I remember the seemingly endless walk through red sand to get there. I’m glad I wasn’t one of the few that decided to scale the ridge of the dune known as “big mamma”!

Some brave souls left their cameras here overnight for star trails whilst we drove 60k back to our lodge but I wasn’t brave enough. I kept thinking that some animals would knock over the camera. Plus those people then had to get up at 3:30am the next day to go get them while it was still very dark & photograph the dawn! This is the day I opted for a lie-in Instead I took Milky way static star photos before we left in the evening. Daniëlla was our kind light mistress for this one (ie. she painted the light onto the tree with her torch while Marsel and I took pictures).

Yet another excellent reason to go on the group photo trip with Marsel & Daniëlla is that they are the only trip that offers Microlighting over the dunes. The microlight pilot Klaus has to fly a long way to get there for them to offer this and it was so much fun! It’s a cross between a motorbike & a hand glider (but much less scary for me than a motor bike). The helmets had an intercom so you could tell Klaus which bits you wanted to see, go higher or lower or over the same dune again etc.

To see more images like this go to my Namibia Gallery on pbase.

We went with a company called Squiver, run by Marsel van Oosten & Daniëlla Sibbing. The trip covers thousands of miles across Namibia so much of the time was spent travelling between amazing places, I’ll be splitting the trip report over 5 posts. This is post 3. The index page for this series is here. Up next is the rocky landscape at Spitzkoppe.

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