Day 4
Day four was our first REALLY look driving day, where we had to cover 600 kilometers… which in a car on regular roads wouldn’t be so bad, but in a safari truck through the Kalahari Desert can be an interesting challenge…
We got up REALLY early, like, before sunrise early, so we could get a head start on the day. I snapped a few photos of the sunrise because I’m STILL trying to learn the light settings on my new camera so I can hopefully get a nice sunrise/sunset photo one of these days…
After that we were on the bus! We had a pitstop at a pretty decent mall and we stocked up on a bunch of last minute things, and then we were truckin’ it onward… We had lunch on the bus (we packed it in the morning) and we arrived to Sesriem Campground (known as the “gateway” to the Namib Naukluft National Park) around 3pm. We whipped through the unpacking and enjoyed the last of the daylight by the pool and hiking, really just chatting with each other and enjoying the scenery. Amaury went on a solo hike and saw a TON of wildlife… Oryx, Warthogs, Ostritches and so many other things. I just saw the Oryx that populate our campground… which is still pretty cool in my opinion.
We had family dinner around 7:30 I think, and then we went for some nightcaps and I finally got to try Amarula! It’s basically the South African local version of Baileys. We had it over ice… SO GOOD.
Day 5
Another super early morning was on the books for day five, but this one for a much more fun reason than a long drive…we were heading out to Dune 45 at 5:30am for a sunrise hike up the dune.
The truck ride was about 30 minutes to the dune, at which point we hopped out and after a quick look decided it “wouldn’t be that bad” and half of us didn’t bring our packs with snack or water.
Rookie. Mistake.
Definitely, DEFINITELY, bring your water and a snack for this. The hike was SUPER long and we had a very slow group in front of us that was taking ages, which made it seem like so much longer than it really was. We ended up passing them when we just couldn’t take it anymore, but it was still slow going, even for just us. Walking up a dune is much harder than it sounds – the sand just refuses to stay put and you can’t get any good grip on it, so the entire way up is a constant struggle, but the view from the top at sunset was SO worth it. Then in order to head down, we RAN down the side of the dune. Such a surreal experience, the entire thing feels like it’s straight out of our kid visions of Aladdin (yes another Disney reference, #sorrynotsorry).
After the sunrise hike, Maja made us an epic breakfast of bacon and eggs, and then we continued on to dune 7 to check out one of the largest natural (yet dry) basins in Namibia. We got to ride in a “desert bus” aka an open air trolley thing pulled by a tractor, in order to get out to see it. Honestly this was the first thing I wasn’t really *wowed* by; it was pretty cool but I wasn’t hype for it. We went to catch the bus back, and ended up getting picked up by a 4×4 to check out another area and then we got to ride in it ALL the way back to the start. It was straight up like being on a rollercoaster – such, SUCH a rush.
We finally headed back to camp to tear down, and then we hopped immediately onto the bus to Solitaire so we could have lunch there and relax.
In Solitaire we had another awesomely chill afternoon, and I actually got a TON of work done, replied to a plethora of emails, and just had a generally nice afternoon off by myself. The rest of the Perfect 10 romped around camp doing various things (pool, hikes, etc) and then we got together again for dinner and bonfire chat, and finally went to bed.
Jane and I had another epic evening conversation before pass-out time and that’s all she wrote.
