Being the indoorsy princess that I am I was a little worried about how I would do in my camping trip to sossusvlei. The Namib desert was the one thing in my itinerary that I was the most excited about and deep inside I knew that camping was just going to be part of the whole experience.

First of all I worried about the bathrooms and the logistics with the tents and all that; then i worried about my performance on climbing the dunes. Based on my performance in the sand dunes while sand boarding I did have some work to do and didn't want to be embarrassed by being the one holding up the group!... More about this later...

The drive to Sossusvlei was SPECTACULAR... I just looked out the window and wished I could capture not only the views but all the feelings I was having. I decided to take it all in and let Stephen (our amateur photographer of the group- see picture below) capture all the views instead of distracting myself and wanting to take a gazillion pictures.

While driving and looking at the landscape and all the rocky mountains I couldn't help myself but think about my friend Alain and say "this would be paradise for him... I need to tell him to come here." He is the most adventurous person I have ever met in my life and I bet climbing in Namibia would be too easy for him! He is such an inspiration!!! :-)

Here are a couple of shots of some of the stops we took on our drive. We had lunch under a shady tree, climb some huge rocks and looked at desert plants.

After 7 hours on the road, a flat tire, and plenty of good laughs we finally arrived at our camp site. We all helped each other build the tents and then had some time to set everything up before we had to leave to go see the sunset.

I found it extremely funny that after spending a short amount of time with the people in the bus they had somehow figured me out; while getting settled in my tent Jacques, a French guy in the tour, came by and asked how my tent decoration was going and if I had already put some posters up and made it all pretty! (And the morning we left the first thing Jason, another guy in the tour, said to me was "Andrea, when are the movers coming?!?") Jajajajaja we all had a good laugh but I wondered how other people perceive me and it took me back to my group's class and wondered about the big question "Do you see me?!?" and most importantly... "Do you see me the way I want you to see me?!?" Mmmmm.... I'll leave at that.

Off we go to see the sunset...

OMG! That hike got all the swear words out of me... Hands down one of the hardest things I have ever climb or hiked!!! 

There is something about physical activity that makes me freak out and it activates this "you can't do it" mentality and it makes me stop breathing and have like a little panic attack. Even before I started hiking up hill I somehow told myself that it was too hard, that I would stop breathing... And even now that I'm writing this I can't breathe... Breathe in I calm my body, breathe out, I smile... :-)

We have a very interesting age group in our tour ranging from 19 to probably 50's. Funny enough the 2 youngest were the last 2, we kept saying "I can't do this, this is too hard, I can't breathe" etc. After we climbed the first part of dune #1 we found the third youngest sitting... He was taking a permanent break! And Tessa, the 19 year old, decided to join him. I was so tempted to say "that's it... I can't do it!" But then I saw this old lady ahead of us, full white hair and I said "if she can, we can!" And the other person replied "Nah, she started 30 mins before we did" I looked at them and said "We are the youngest, we can do it" but they refused. I did not let myself give up, if I give up day one... What kind of motivation will I have on day 26 when I need to climb table mountain?! Or when something hard comes my way? Will I just give up? No, I don't give up and I won't give up... So I went full on CBT until I reached the sunset... Well, at least the little that was left of it! (See sweaty picture of me by the tall grass holding my well deserved drink!)