Serra Cafema—Day Eight
Today we were going on a different kind of adventure. We got to take the quad runner’s out into the sand dunes. I’m pretty sure that most of us hadn’t been on them before or had much experience with them. It was easy to get the basics down, and it was quickly obvious who the daredevils were (Scott)! And no, we don’t have photos of Karin flying off the road to blaze her own trail through the dune grass. It really was a blast.
That morning started off a little cool. The fog had rolled in from the ocean and was sitting around camp and along the river. When we got up higher, it made for some great photos.
We took a break from the quad runners and took a walk in a canyon. There was a steep drop-off that probably made for a great water fall when it rained. At the base of the drop off was a pool that the Himba use for drinking water. As we were exploring the nooks and crannies, someone found a snake eating a lizard! It was a small snake, and the lizard was almost as big as he was.
There were palm trees in the canyon. The Himba women use the hard seeds to make jewelry. They paint and carve the seeds. Clement cracked one seed pod open by dropping a huge rock on it. Got the job done, but cracked the seed to bits. Dave had a better, if more time-consuming method to get the seeds out.
After lunch I took a walk to see what kind of lizards and small things I could find. It had gotten hot so there wasn’t much animal activity but I found a few things. The mules are descendants of the zebra. You can’t see it in these photos, but they have one dark stripe that runs down their shoulder to their belly. There were beetles everywhere, and they were all hitching rides. They left a neat pattern in the sand. The wind was picking up and had softened our tracks from the day before into a cool pattern. The wind was throwing a fine spray of sand off the tops of the dunes. It was so light it was hard to see at first. It looked a lot like the mist coming off a wave in the ocean.
We had one last sundowner in Namibia, and it sounded like they had something special in mind. No one would tell us where we were going, but it was soon obvious we were heading out into the dunes. We stopped on the way to look at some bones, check out some wild life, and enjoy the view. The road just ended at the base of a dune. But we kept going! And going! It was really very neat to be driving out where there wasn’t a clear track. Our drivers seemed to know where they were going! It was really beautiful to see the dunes go on for so long. They totally filled the valley we were driving through. Any spot along the way would have made for a wonderful sundowner, but Clement had a specific destination in mind, so we kept going. Finally we find the perfect spot. This area was up higher than the rest of the dunes and offered a spectacular view down the valley. We were up high enough to see over most of the dunes. The sunset painted everything gold. It really felt like a magical place. We tried to slide down the dunes, but it wasn’t quite steep enough or slippery enough — but it was fun to try! It really was an excellent ending to a fantastic trip.
That night after dinner we discovered there was some real talent in our group. The staff at Serra Cafema came out and sang and danced for Chris’ birthday. Then Terry shared some of his music with us. Then Chris recited The Spell of the Yukon by Robert Service. It is too bad that we had an early morning and still had to pack because I think most of us would have hung out longer to enjoy a little more time together.