Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert is famous for its vast sand dunes, and we spent the last two days photographing them from the ground and from two different modes of air travel.  Though we are in a dry desert, we also got to see how quickly a storm can arrive, and just how quickly it can dissipate.

The first day was spent driving along a major highway (which in Namibia, means one lane in each direction, but fully paved!), stopping periodically to photograph dunes along the road. Though the tour members had different styles, and tended to choose different vantage points, there were times when there was one angle that clearly called out for capturing the scene, which resulted in a line of tripods (bottom).  There was also a brief, but intense storm that caught several of our group unexpectedly, as they rushed back to the bus in the rain (top-middle).

The dunes are immense, up to 1200 feet in height for some of the peaks. The dunes are so large that it is hard to really show the scale in these photos.

When we got off the bus to photograph this set of dunes, the weather was pleasant and clear, as shown in the first photo block of this post.  After about half an hour though, the wind started blowing hard (sand can be seen blowing off the top of the dune in left-most image).  Soon the sky became overcast and threatening (upper-right), and then a sandstorm blew through. The storm reminded me of the scene from The Mummy movie, where it comes out of nowhere and covers the land while the hero tries to outrun it (lower-right).

Just as quickly as the storm rose, it died down less than half an hour later.  The only evidence that it ever happened was the rainbow (bottom left) and the clouds that gave us a gorgeous sunset (bottom middle and right).

The next day we flew in a small plane to Walvis Bay.  There were actually two planes needed to transport the 11 of us (10 tour photographers and one tour guide).  We were with one other couple in a Cessna 210, while the rest of the group flew in an Airvan (upper image shows us passing the larger and slower Airvan).

Along the way, we flew over the Edward Bolin,  a famous shipwreck that has migrated 800 meters (about 8 football fields length) up onto the sand dunes.  It lies as evidence of the encroaching Namibian sands, and a warning to all sailors to stay clear of this Skeleton Coast.

This afternoon, after landing from the small planes, we went right back up on even smaller planes — technically “microlights.” Basically, these are flying motorcycles with two seats and a lawn mower engine in back for the small propeller. The first thing the pilots did was make sure we had no jewelry or camera parts that could come loose from vibration. They warned us that anything falling loose would hit the propeller, which we were assured was not a good thing to have happen in flight… ☺

The airfield was just a flat section of hard pack sand. Pilots always need to know which direction the wind is blowing in order to land into the wind, which is why airfields always include a wind sock.  Being a bare stretch of sand, there was no windsock handy, so Wimpie (our local guide) held up a garbage bag (upper left), so the pilots could see what the wind was doing.

There were two microlight planes with pilots (Klaus and Andre), so we went up in pairs.  Each flight involved a pilot first strapping in the passenger and giving a quick briefing on what to expect (upper right and middle left). The takeoff was fast (middle right), and each plane flew under the other for photos of the planes in flight (lower right).

From the air of the microlight, there were sand dunes as far as the eye could see. Basically, we had 20 minutes each to capture some of the sand patterns visible only from above.