camps: Little Kulala, Hoanib Skeleton Coast, and Damaraland, each sounding more romantic than the last. But there was one final leg of my journey, a bush flight connection out to the first camp, and luckily, my pilot was a breath of fresh air—rugged and sunkissed, swinging my luggage over his shoulders.“There’s really not much to see on the flight out,” he said.
Well then. It wasn’t exactly what I expected to hear, having just made the 30-hour journey to southern Africa all the way from Boston. I went to Namibia for the exact reason I go to any destination: there were things I wanted to see. The flight over on Qatar Airways had been fine enough—I’ve lived in New York City apartments smaller than my “Qsuite”—but 30 hours are 30 hours.
Minutes later, we were airborne—two large men hunched over, clammy knees and elbows knocking, me trying not to yelp every time the plane lurched with turbulence. Turns out, he was right about the landscape: arid hills quickly gave way to arid flats, desert stretching out in every direction, an unimaginably vast land.Namibia is larger than the state of Texas, and today is one of the most sparsely populated countries on the planet.
In the final minutes of our flight, the landscape began to change. Dry grasslands dissipated into sprawling, flat desert, and in the distance, I saw them: the great red Sossusvlei, enormous red sand dunes, many the size of the Empire State Building, undulating for miles and miles into the distance.
That is a Gembock in the pic.