Namibian Desert Adventures

(Zara) Today in Namibia, home to the amazing sandy orange dunes, we went ATVing and sand boarding. The sun was shining in the cloudless sky and thankfully it wasn’t blistering hot. The dunes that go on for miles were truly beautiful with sharp curves and edges and perfectly flat sides. Not a grain of sand was out of place. We have done other ATV trips in the past for instance New Zealand and Cambodia but this adventure was by far the best.

We hopped on our automatic ATVs and started four wheeling on the perfectly fine sand for a full hour up and over steep dunes. We played follow the leader by always staying in our guide, Auto’s path so that we wouldn’t get stuck in the soft sand. Often Dad would get stuck and have to be pushed out. Auto made hand motions to tell us when to speed up or slow down. Most of the time he pointed to his left or right to show us where danger was and this happened a lot because there were many places where you could basically fall off a sandy cliff. Whenever we sped up a hill it was so steep that I couldn’t see over the edge and what we were about to go down was always a surprise. That didn’t stop us from going full speed and our crazy guide led us on some really fun paths. When we weren’t on a rollercoaster going up and down and on quick turns, we used high dunes as a half pipe. This was my favorite part and we would go all the way up the hill and then quickly turn and come back down. Most of the time I felt like the ATV would flip, or Jolie who was sitting behind me, would fall off. We did this about ten times before reaching our sand boarding destination and I could have played like that all day.

Once we arrived, Auto applied lots of wax to make our thin, flat pieces of cardboard extra slippery. As we looked at the steep 35-degree angle dune we were about to slide head first down, everyone got too scared so I volunteered to go first. I lay down on the board, lifted it with my hands up to my nose and kept my elbows and legs up which were key elements to not eating a face full of sand. I got a big push and soon I was flying down the dune and within a matter of seconds I had made it down alive and with barely any sand on me. Everyone else followed and only Dad had a problem with lifting his legs and ate a good portion of sand. On my second time down my hands slipped when I hit a bump and I ended up with my whole body covered in sand.

We each went down a few times but the tiring walk back limited our runs down. Walking in sand isn’t easy. Just when we were about done, Auto asked if any of us wanted to go down the higher dune. I immediately was in and walked up to the top with Halle and Dad who also wanted to do it. The path was surprisingly less steep and the dunes made a natural curve so that it turned us onto a longer path. Dad went first to test the run, next me, then Halle. I ended up going the farthest but Halle had a malfunction and only made it half way. Once we did it, Jolie decided she had to try it too. In the last few minutes we were there, Maya and I stood up on our boards and slid down mini dunes usually concluding in a sandy mess.

Soon we had to leave but I didn’t mind because I had sand in every crevice of my clothes and I knew the ATV ride back would be exciting. It seemed a lot shorter than the ride over and instead of riding in the dunes, part of the time we went on more of a gray sandy path. We went over more steep mounds and once we finished I was sad and definitely wanted to keep going. If I could recommend anything from this trip so far I would truly say come to Namibia to visit the dunes and go ATVing and sand boarding. It was definitely in the top five fun activities of our entire trip.

Check out the video Maya made.

Namibia from Salem Explorers on Vimeo.