Day 2: Dunes and Deadvlei

We’re staying at Sossuvlei Lodge again tonight, so this morning we went on an excursion to Sossusvlei itself, about 65km away.

We met at reception at 6.45am and left 15 minutes later in a 12-seater open-top jalopy of some kind. Our destination was at the end of a long tarmacked road and it took us about an hour of driving. We saw a lot of sand dunes (including the famous Dune 45) but not too much wildlife, except for a pack of springboks.

Once we got to Sossusvlei, we had three options of reaching Deadvlei – one was to climb a massive dune called Big Daddy, one was to climb a medium dune, and one was to walk “about 1100 metres” to the pan itself.

We opted for the middle option – it’s very difficult climbing a dune, because you’re walking in soft sand on the ridge, so you need to keep the momentum going and also have good balance. We were told by our guide, Jonas, that it would take 15 minutes – but after about 35 minutes of a very testing climb (where I fell over 6 or 7 times) I felt like I pretty much reached the top, and slid down the dune face on my butt, which seemed like the best way to do it.

Once we’d made it to the bottom, we were at Deadvlei itself which is a stunning salt pan full of trees that died about 800 years ago, but aren’t decomposing due to the dry heat. After hanging around for half an hour taking pictures we walked back to the parking area – I think 1100m was an estimate on the low side.

Our guide then laid out a nice spread for breakfast – and we then realised we’d done all that walking and climbing on an empty stomach. We got back to Sossusvlei Lodge at around 1pm, and the rest of the day was lunch, sleep, beer, dinner and stargazing.