Zebra River Lodge + The Dunes

 So this blog is about a week late, but it is about our adventures last weekend. Last Friday we loaded a bus yet again to travel to the Southwest. We traveled mostly on dirt roads and so it was a rather bumpy ride. The group stayed at a place called the Zebra River Lodge, which was located in the middle of nowhere in the desert. When we arrived on Friday, we spent the rest of the day lounging around by the pool.

On Saturday we left bright and early at 5 AM to go to the world's largest sand dunes. We left so early because we did not want it to be scalding hot by the time we climbed to the top. Our first stop was a place called Deadvlei. If you Google Namibia, pictures of Deadvlei are what show up. Deadvlei is a clay pan, or a dead marsh. There are dead trees there that people think are over 9000 years old. However, the trees are still standing and they do not decompose because it is so hot and dry. In order to get to Deadvlei, we had to climb up half and dune and then turn right.  Now after you climb a dune, there is only one way to get down. That way is by running down the side of the dune, which results in lots of sand in the shoes.

Walking among the dead trees on the hard, patch worked ground. It was nice not to have the resistance of hard ground for a little bit.

A sand buggy had originally taken us to Deadvlei and it came back and took us to climb one of the bigger sand dunes called Big Mama. Although it took me awhile, I made it to the top. It was amazing to me how untouched the sand dunes seem and so far away from human disturbance. Yet, when you are climbing the dunes it is so much easier to follow in the footsteps of those who have come before you.

Here is a picture of our group and me at the top of Big Mama.

 After I ran down Big Mama, I came across a completely dried up lake.

As I said earlier, when you run down a dune you get a lot of sand in your shoes. When we got back we had a little downtime and then we all got into various trucks that drove us up to a cliff for what is called a sundowner. On the cliff we enjoyed some wine while we watched the sunset. As we were looking over the clifftop, we noticed that there were two people walking down the road towards us. In fact, they were two members of our group that had gotten left behind. Paula and Jan had to get pick them up. Other than that rather large error, the sunset was beautiful. 

I have notice that my blog posts are becoming more pictures and less words. Hopefully next week I will be better at posting more consistently. Next week I will write about my first two weeks student teaching. However, I need to go to bed now because some of us are leaving at 3 AM to go to the beach. I am super excited! Until Then.