There, we will see wrecked ships, including the German passenger ship Eduard Bohlen, which smashed on the shore in 1909 and is now 200 metres inland, apparently sailing through the sand. We will fly over half-buried buildings and equipment that speak of other dead dreams.
But right now the sand is overwhelming. In one place, I see a large white area -- it looks like ice! It's Sossusvlei, our pilot says, a dry valley where once a river flowed to the ocean until the dunes built up by battling east and west winds blocked its path. Nearby is Deadvlei, where stark, long-dead trees tell the same tale.
These two cut-off valleys surrounded by dunes are the focal point of Wings Over Africa's popular Sossusvlei Scenic flights, two and a half hours of amazing vistas of the desert that cover nearly 10 per cent of this old, but young, country.
In two days, the five of us on this small plane will walk across Sossusvlei and Deadvlei and climb among the dunes we are seeing now from the air. We will be as minuscule among their towering peaks as the shadow of our plane on Namibia's enormous sea of sand.
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