Once More Unto the Vlei

I landed in Windhoek in the late morning on November 14th. I had prepared accordingly, switching to shorts prior to flying into the impending heat. I did forget the tank top. Rookie mistake. After scurrying to the front of the line at passport control, I met up with Dave Brosha and Paul Zizka at baggage collection. We all flew into Amsterdam from our respective cities, where we had a 10-hour layover. We walked around the city, and I took mental notes of things I'd like to revisit on my return in a few weeks. Our flight left Amsterdam in the evening, so I made sure to change prior to getting on the plane. Have you ever tried to change in an airplane washroom? Ideal under no circumstances.

We had a car rented to take us to Swakopmund, where we would be spending the night at my parent's house before heading out on a grandiose adventure the next morning. We were in Africa a few days prior to the start of the 2018 edition of The Chronicles of Namibia, taking the extra time to get our body clocks adjusted and to explore one of my favourite playgrounds, Deadvlei. Deadvlei was one of those places that I've always wanted to see prior to knowing how accessible it was going to become to me. When my parents moved to Namibia in 2015 and working as a leader on two workshops, I've had the privilege of going to Deadvlei five times, with each experience different than the last. This story is about the fourth time. The most magical time...

On a previous trip to Namibia, the three of us had taken a tour to see some shipwrecks with a company called Travel Uncharted. I had heard about Travel Uncharted and the owner and lead tour guide, Paul Lombard (henceforth referred to as Paul L to avoid confusion) on another tour that I had been on to Sandwich Harbour. I was told that Paul L was one of six people in Namibia that can get permits to access the areas that we were wanting to visit. When we returned home from the 2017 workshop, I started a dialogue with Paul L about getting the permits to get into Deadvlei at night. Dave, Paul and I couldn't stop talking about it after we went there with our workshop group. It took a while to get everything sorted as permits take a lot of work and cost a lot of money to get. TIA.

The following morning was a leisurely get up, which was nice. I had coffee with my mother while everyone started waking up and getting their stuff together. We were to meet Paul L and his girlfriend, Michelle Coatzee, at the Walvis Bay airport. We were going to drop off our rental car there as we no longer needed it as we would be brought back to Windhoek with Paul and Michelle. After an incident with my wallet and shortly after someone's VISA, we were back on the road thirty minutes behind schedule. Not the worst. We met Paul L and Michelle in the airport parking lot, unloaded our car and loaded up their trucks (bakkies) with our gear and we were on our way! Dave and Paul hopped in the lead truck with Paul L and I hopped in the second truck with Michelle. It was roughly an eight hour drive over not the best roads (that's putting it lightly) to the Kanaan Desert Retreat, where we would be spending the night before heading back out the following morning to get into Deadvlei. We were going the roundabout way through the backside of the dune Big Daddy. We had a long hot day of driving ahead of us. We would have no idea how hot it would actually get.

We hopped into the trucks after breakfast and a lot of coffee, which may have come into play with some dehydration later on. We’ll get to that. We entered the concession and started our journey north, which would be another seven or eight-hour drive through the dunes. For the most part, things went relatively smooth and most of the journey was uneventful... until it wasn't.

We were travelling through sand dunes topped with foliage which needed fancy driving and quick thinking to maneuver around. Recent rains in Namibia had caused a lot of the foliage to grow, making some of the plants larger and thicker than they normally would have been. In my three previous trips I had never seen anything like this, and our two guides who were born and raised in the country said they had also never seen anything like it. Paul L was in the lead, and as we crested a dune, the right side of his truck rolled over a bush and the suspension gave a creak, and the truck slowed to a stop in front of Michelle and I. We followed down the dune and pulled up to a stop ahead of the other vehicle. As this happened, the temperature gauge in our truck spiked into the red. Michelle shut down the truck immediately. We all stepped out of the vehicles while repairs were made on Paul L's truck. When it was time for us to get going again, the truck Michelle and I were in wouldn't start. Great. With the temperature rising by the second and with no time to waste, Paul L hooked a tow rope to his truck so he could tow Michelle and I to our campsite. The A/C in our car wasn't working, so we rolled down the windows trying to let any air through. The temperature gauge in the lead vehicle had hit 50 degrees Celsius, which we also think was the max limit the display would show. The wind was whipping through our vehicle, bringing not reprieve from the heat but gusts of the hottest air I've ever felt. Not to mention the dust. What should have taken another hour or so of driving ended up taking an extra two. As we were driving, Michelle pointed out the area in which we would be making camp, and I watched the mountain range grow closer and closer as the temperature grew hotter and hotter.

We arrived at our designated campsite, a short distance away from the backside of Big Daddy. We began to set up camp, and no sooner did we commence set up when I was hit with a wave of nausea and light-headedness. I got pretty worried. I told everyone that I was faint and apparently the colour had drained from my face. I went to one of the trucks and lied down in the back to catch some sleep. I was worried that heatstroke had started and the night ahead of me was in peril. I felt bad that I wasn't able to help set up camp, but no one else seemed to mind. I was "encouraged" by how ill I supposedly looked. I woke up a while later to Dave and Paul playing their guitars as the wind continued to whip sand all around the campsite. Paul L had constructed a barrier around us, but it didn't stop the wind breaking through and depositing sand over everything. Michelle was making sandwiches for everyone in the back of one of the trucks, where the temperature was much higher than we were experiencing outside. Thanks, Michelle! We played some music, Dave and Paul on guitar and me on the bongos until it was time for us to head into Deadvlei for sunset. I was feeling much better by this point, albeit very tired as my body had no idea where it was. We loaded up our gear into the trucks, with extra water bottles and all we'd need for the next 12 hours in Deadvlei.

Now to put this in perspective: Deadvlei at night cannot be accessed under "normal" circumstances. It takes a lot of time and money to secure the permits needed to get into this area at night. Paul, Dave and I are extremely lucky and have joined the small number of photographers who have been able to shoot the area at night. Paul L and Michelle drove us as close to the peak of Big Daddy as they could and we walked up the rest of the way. We crested the dune to one of the best sunsets I've ever seen. Not best in the sense of colour or vibrance, but because I looked down on a scene that so few people before me have been able to witness. My adrenalin peaked as the wind whipped. Sandblasted in all directions, my excitement did not abate. I ran down the dune full throttle, not wanting to waste a moment

Sunset at Big Daddy with Deadvlei in the distance

Michelle and Paul L

Paul, Dave and I started walking towards the petrified trees while Paul L and Michelle sat on top of Big Daddy enjoying some wine while keeping an eye on us. We all had radios so we could stay in contact with each other. The wind hadn't died down and in fact was almost worse as we were at the bottom of the bowl which became the epicentre for all the sand coming in from the top of the dunes. It was really hard to shoot anything and was rather frustrating. I still wasn't feeling 100%, so I decided to set up my camera behind a tree which would hopefully act as a shield for some of the sand while shooting a star trail. Lying down on the claypan using my camera bag as a pillow, I closed my eyes while my camera did its thing and woke up about an hour later to the sound of silence and the multitude of stars that hovered above me.

I was feeling much better after the nap and got to work shooting. The moon was high in the sky, and wouldn't be setting until about 2am, right around the time the Milky Way would reappear in the sky. Perfect. Being the sole occupants of Deadvlei at the moment, Dave, Paul and I were able to shoot without interfering with each other's images which was a welcome change to a normally tourist-heavy area. It was around midnight and Dave wasn't feeling too well (a story I won't delve into as it isn't mine to share) so he headed back to camp, leaving Paul and I to do our thing.

I was alternating between star trails and "regular" long exposure images. During the star trails, I would lie down on the ground and stare up at the sky while my camera captured the heavens. During one such trail, I heard a guitar being strummed as Paul had brought his acoustic down and was taking some self-portraits while playing. When he was finished, I clapped and cheered. I was the sole attendee to a concert held by one of the world's greatest astrophotographers. Life is good.

About an hour before sunrise, Paul and I started our journey back up Big Daddy, which we had to summit from the bottom of the claypan straight up, which isn't the normal way nor is it anything close to the easy way. On my way up, I had to keep giving myself pep talks so I could make it up and over. With much self-encouragement, I made it to the top of the peak, meeting up with the Pauls and Michelle as we watched the sunrise from the top of one of the biggest sand dunes in the world. I was exhausted but we stayed for awhile, watching the rush of vehicles travel through the sand to get to the parking area on the other side for their entrance into Deadvlei. We were able to watch them with high-powered binoculars, and it was a fun game guessing which cars would get stuck.

Paul wondering how he ended up stuck with me.

We were supposed to have stayed an extra night in the desert, with another night in Deadvlei. We had returned to camp around 7am and attempted to sleep, the rising sun bringing the temperature up with each passing minute. Sleep was impossible, but we tried. Meanwhile, Paul L had been able to fix Michelle's truck, and we made a group decision that another day in the desert heat might not be the best idea, and with the other truck now working, we should start our journey back to Windhoek, stopping for another night at a campsite along the way. Our good fortune didn't last long, as the truck Michelle and I were in once again stopped running, forcing us to once again get towed through the dunes to our next destination.

Upon arriving at the new campsite in the early evening, I had a nap in the truck while the others did whatever they did. I was far too tired to stay up another night, so decided to go to sleep and rest as we were starting the official workshop the next day. I woke in the morning to an incessant buzzing sound, and upon opening my tent, discovered that our camp had been overrun by bees. There was a nest somewhere, and there were literally thousands of bees all over the place. We tried to pack up camp as quickly as possible, but Michelle, Dave and I both suffered bee stings. Dave and I were stung on the exact same part of the exact same foot, and over the next two weeks we would share in random bouts of itchiness and pain at the same time of the evening. Stay tuned for more on that in another blog!

We left camp before it became too hot, Michelle and I needed to be towed out again. This time we weren't driving through sand dunes but more of a vegetative area which caused sand and dirt to cover us for most of the trip home. Paul L asked me if I wanted to jump in the lead vehicle, but I had been through too much with Michelle over the last couple days that I couldn't abandon her for comfort now. So we suffered and laughed about it because there wasn't much else we could do. We could roll the windows up and slowly bake, or let the breeze through and enjoy the comfort of a cleansing shower later. Shower it was! When we arrived at a service station, one of Travel Uncharted's drivers were there to meet us. Michelle and I shook the dirt off us and we all gathered for a well-deserved meal and a milkshake. At the end of this trip, we had consumed 75 litres of water. We left Michelle with the other driver and we all got into Paul L's truck to continue to Windhoek. Our days in the desert had come to an end with us making it out relatively unscathed. It was such a wicked time, one of my biggest dreams had come true.

For more information on amazing excursions like this, get ahold of Paul Lombard or Michelle Coatzee at Travel Uncharted.

For images Dave and Paul took that night, check out the work on their websites as well as their Facebook and Instagram.