Sand Dune 7

I finally made it to the 390 metre pinnacle of Sand Dune 7 – the world’s highest sand dune.

We had raced there early in the morning, as soon as the gates had opened. Sand Dune 7 was pretty much my entire reason for visiting Namibia. As I sat there, deliberately a few spaces away from the boys, I watched the morning sun creep out from behind the cinematic majesty that spread out before me. Right then my whole world was nothing but a rolling sea of sand and a vast, cloudless blue sky. It was totally unlike anything else I have seen; perhaps it was not like anything else in this world.

This was day 5 of my 4x4 trip with the boys. Dreaming of that moment when I would be sitting on top of that dune was the only thing that got me through my time with them. Actually, it wasn’t all bad, and now, in hind-sight I look back fondly of my time with them and think to myself “they weren’t all that bad really”. But by day 5 my fuse had really shortened, and day 5 was only two days before that fuse finally blew.

There was one good afternoon in particular, day 4 I think, I had felt that I was in paradise. We had been winding through deep valleys, passed rocky hills, glimpsing kudu’s, zebra’s, springbok and Ostrich’s. We followed long stretches of road that led to soft-focus horizons blurred by sandy breezes and the sort of dry heat that makes the rumpled hills seem to quiver. We needed to stop driving, to rest, to get out a book or a pack of cards and more cold beer of course. We spotted a thin river down one of the deep escarpments that cut the earths crust. Michael cranked the car into 4x4 and hesitantly we crept down toward it.

Many times I felt the car tilting so much I was sure I would soon enough be looking at the world upside down. But he did it, he kept us upright and he got us there. We set up the tents and played a bit of frisbee. The boys wanted to climb to the top of the cliff to watch the sunset, I wanted some time in nature alone. While they set off on their climb I stripped down and got in touch with nature. The water was shallow, but it was cool and fresh and I felt the tingles of goose bumps spread across my sweaty, sticky skin as I floated on the surface, watching the stain of orange seep through the clouds and the shadows of dusk sweep down from the cliff and across my cooling body. I thought I had found heaven!

That night, completely alone at the basin of a thinly carved gully we drank wine and played cards and laughed until our eyes were heavy and our arms too tired to swat away the swarms of mosquitoes.

Magical moments like that one far out-weighed the frustrations, but I think I let all the little tiffs and the little comments get the better of me. The fact that Alex’s full-mouthed snoring kept me from any form of deep sleep the entire 7 days I travelled with them didn’t help my patience levels.

The fact that Michael kept comparing everything we saw to America and pointed out every woman we passed and made comments like “hot body, too bad about the face” got a bit tedious after a while. But what really creamed the cake was his passing comment one morning about poor service from wait-staff: “They are so stupid, no wonder they are third-world”.

One afternoon I stormed off during a conversation with Michael and Alex:

Alex: Around gay people I feel unsafe

Me: That’s ironic considering it is gay people that get bashed by straight people

Michael: No, no I agree. One night I went drinking with my sister’s gay friends and they slipped a roofy in my drink and when I woke up a guy was sucking my dick so I kicked him in the face and smashed his car

Me: Welcome to a woman’s world!

And I stormed off without making any of the points I wanted to and should have.

At sunset we didn’t go back to Sand Dune 7 because we anticipated too many tourists. We took our beers with us and climbed one of its neighbours which looked of equal size, but this one we had all to ourselves. In my diary I struggled to describe the dunes, the immeasurable space around us, the feeling of sedative emptiness. I tried to describe the dunes as creamy folds of caramel soft-serve ice-cream, or likes sheets of silk. They were topped with brush strokes of pistachio green where grasses clung on to life. I guess that inability to accurately express beauty is why I don’t consider myself a writer, but then again, how can you paint something so illustrious and so unreal it steals your breath away? I kept hearing the opening song of The Lion King play in my head and I thought “this is what I had hoped to find in Africa – the big empty spaces I had imagined were Africa”

We did make it to the ghost town. It was worth seeing, not just because it was a little creepy, but mainly because it led us to meet Chris.

Chris was from Germany and only 9 weeks in to his 3 year hitch-hike across the world. I instantly liked Chris from the second he tore into the backpackers room in a sweaty fluster after a long day squatting in the heat on the side of the road begging for a ride. He joined us for a seafood, seaside dinner on the first night and then for a dust-blown wander around Kolmanskop: the long abandoned colonial mining town where the wind howls and sand swells into piles in the shells of houses, a hospital, a school and a bowling alley. I think we were all grateful for Chris – another dynamic to our tired and taxed trio.

Chris seemed to like me too, and we arranged to meet in Windhoek in 3 days time. I had told him that I wanted to travel north, to see the tribes. I didn’t know where they were exactly, who they were exactly or how to get there exactly. But he nominated himself to help me find them.

I made it to the second last day of the time planned in the 4x4 with the boys before my fuse finally blew.

Michael and I had a huge fight. We both said some pretty nasty stuff and I fought back tears. I jumped out of the car and never looked back.