One of the main reasons I chose this tour was that it included a visit to Soussusvlei and that was on our agenda for today. We drove through the predawn light to reach the national park gates which open at sunrise. I sat up front today as co-pilot to Cosmos so I was able to call some of the shots as to when we stopped for photos. This area is made up of huge orange sand-dunes, the sand originally from the Kalahari Desert thousands of years ago. While the shape might change, the footprint remains the same, mainly because the sand is mixed with lots of minerals which weight it down. And these dunes make for some great photographic opportunities.
A very low dense fog drifted along the base of the dunes at first but cleared later in the morning. We stopped at Dune 45 (45 kilometres from the park entrance) and most of my group climbed it. I only went part of the way up as I was a) concerned about my cameras getting sand in them and b) there were too many interesting vantage points at the base to photograph with some wonderful old trees against the background of the dunes. I was following behind one gentleman who was going from tree to tree, thinking he had the same intention as me, until I realised he was looking for a little privacy as there were no public toilets available!
 |
| Climbing Dune 45 |
After having our boxed breakfast here, we then continued on further into the park, finally transferring to safari type vehicles to go the last few kilometres through sand and a walk to reach the dead pan. This is another iconic photographic landscape with the bleached pan and its black skeletal trees against the orange dunes. The river had originally flowed through this area but the dunes on each side of the valley gradually moved in and closed the area off, creating this salt pan and dead trees.
A quick visit to Seissen Canyon, one of the least impressive canyons I’ve seen, then back to a rest stop for a sandwich lunch. We finally arrived back at the hotel just after 4pm and as I’ve come down the head cold doing the rounds of the bus, I had a nap before dinner.
 |
| Seissen Canyon |
I really liked the tree with the fog and the sand dune; and the last photo of the dead pan ... layered with the different colors and studded with the dead trees.
ReplyDelete