Dune 45

Got up at 5:00 a.m. and left camp at 5:40 as planned. We reached Dune 45 just as the sun was coming over the horizon. The young folk scrambled up the dune in time to view the rise. I made it up about two-thirds of the way when the sun started peaking through, so stopped there to take my photos. Man, these dunes are massive. I have seen pictures of them on the internet but they hardly did them justice. Dune 45 is about 150 meters. Other dunes can reach as high as 350 meters. After viewing the sunrise we got back into the truck and headed to the starting point of a 1 1/2 hour walk into the desert with an experienced guide who knows much more about the desert than most researchers. Really down to earth stuff about the small creatures that live here and how they are perfectly adapted to desert life. He talked about bushmen that lived here until the turn of the 20th century and how they were persecuted by the Europeans that arrived here during the 1800s. They had a tough life but here again, had become perfectly adapted to desert life. So perfectly adapted they were, that the foreigners considered them more animal than man and treated them as such even to the point of hunting them as fair game.

On the way back to the camp our truck was stopped by the Police. They had already turned back one truck of tourists. They had stopped the other truck for speeding and figured we were probably speeding as well, but had not clocked us. He came on board the bus to sort of inspect us I guess. We were real friendly with him and offered him some food. Dushani caught his eye, likely because of her darker complexion (Dushani is of Sri Lankan heritage but is Canadian).  The cop said he would let us go if he could come around to our camp to visit us tonight. Poor Dushani was terrified for she had a pretty good idea what he wanted to come around to the camp for.

We got back to the camp around 3:00 in the afternoon and talked, and some, including me, went for a swim in the pool. The camps in the national parks are pretty nice and are well equipped, usually with a store, bar and clean washrooms.

We had another great supper and were sitting around the campfire when this cop arrives. Well, Dushani darn near died. He (the cop) was introduced to everybody and when it came around to Dushani, he moved right in beside her. Fortunately, one of the young guys in our group was sitting on the other side of her and with a little quiet prodding from others, he posed as her boyfriend. Things went on for a while, but eventually he left. Dushani was visibly shaken and shortly thereafter she gave her rescuer a big hug and went to her tent. At the very least, it was a disturbing situation. She couldn’t just tell him to take off because with him being a cop he could make things pretty tough for the rest of us. So anyway, everything worked out. However, some of us wondered what would have happened if she had been travelling alone.

Hopefully, this will be the end of this incident.