Dune 7

Wikipedia says that: Dune 7, which is the highest dune in the world, not Big Daddy, as it’s the seventh dune past the Tsauchab river before dune 45 on your right handside toward Sossusvlei (note that this should not be confused with another “Dune 7” found in Namibia, near Walvis Bay

We didn’t go to the big dune 7, but we did go to the other Dune 7 just east of Walvis Bay, which is south of Swakopmond. We drove the 45 minutes to get there, and when we got within sight and saw tiny dots moving slowly up the side, the people with the sharper eyes identified those as humans, and then we started thinking of the long climb ahead of us.

Gravity was against us, when we were going up, what with slippery sand and all, for every two feet that we went up, we went down one. That was very tiring. Unless it has been really windy or a lot of people have gone up the part that my father and mother went up, you can see their zigzags as they went up the mountain. As I was the first one going up the slope and was about a third of the way up the slow climb when the others started. Since it is a lot faster going along the top, I went up to the tallest point, which is pretty high, stood there, and walked almost all the way back to where I started when I met Eryn coming up. My father came up too, and we started what you might call rough-housing, as in I would try to push him off to one side, but he always succeeded in pushing me over.

When we went back down, I decided to do something really fun to get down: rolling. If any of you ever feel the urge to roll down the side of a tall sand dune, resist the urge. It is most uncomfortable and you get sand in places that shouldn’t get sand in them. Needless to say, I got down eventually, walked back to the car, and we were off.