Another of the special destinations our tour enabled us to access outside of normal tourist times is the Deadvlei.  This is a hardback clay pan, on which many dead camel thorn trees have stood for 600-700 years. These trees grew when a nearby river flooded briefly.  Once the climate changed again, and the sand blocked access from the river, the trees died from lack of sufficient water, and are now surrounded by the tallest sand dunes in the world, some reaching 1200 feet high.  They remain blackened from the scorching sun, but never decompose because the humidity is so low in this region.

We were allowed to stay later than any other tourists, which gave us the  chance to set up our cameras for star trails overnight. One result is shown above.  We returned in the morning before other tourists, meaning we could recover our cameras after the batteries had run down, and not worry about them being stolen.

This was the most strenuous hike of our Namibia tour.  Though only 1 km from the parking lot, that entire distance was through soft, deep sand. We went there the first night, and obtained the images above.  That night the wind started howling at gale force levels, with thunder, lightning, rain, and even hail covering our camp and the Deadvlie — here in the desert!

Wimpie, our local Namibian guide said that he had never seen hail before, though he did say that winds of the force we were experiencing sometimes occurred during their Winter (remember, since we are now in the Southern Hemisphere, July is the peak of Winter).

At any rate, with the combination of the difficult terrain to hike and the rather horrific weather, we decided to sit out the next day’s return to the valley at sunrise and again at sunset (Ryan — our tour leader — retrieved our cameras for us in the morning).  Rather disappointing that we did not have more opportunities to capture unique images, but sometimes we bow to nature and use the time to catch up on photo editing.