Deadly serious

Out of the cave I setup my small tripod and capture one more image before we return. It's been a long day of many activities but also very satisfying. The opportunity to sit and drink beer surrounded by cheetahs has got to be a moment I will never forget. I feel so lucky to have had so many new experiences and share it will some lovely people.

As the rest leave I decide to stay behind in the darkness with my camera and try to capture an image. But in the darkness it's not easy. With all the lights gone I stand still and can feel the bats as they fly past brushing my face. It's slightly unsettling. After many tries, this is the best I get, on a slow shutter.

We return for a supper of chicken with vegetables and chill while watching the sunset. It's been a day full of activities but we had just one more to complete. A visit to a bat cave. So in the dark we jump back into the truck and drive out into the bush with some more beer. At first it didn't seem like much, just a hole in the ground that we could barely see with the help of our phone lights. With the lights dimmed we begin to become aware of a stready stream of bats darting out of the hole. Inside the hole is a large metal ladder. As the stream begins to dwindle we are invited to descend so one by one we carefully step down.  The space is very tight and there's barely enough room to pass each other. From the bottom of the ladder the cave doesn't extend far before there's a large drop and the walls narrow. In the distance, with our phones, we can see deeper into the cave and the occasional flutter as a bat passes overhead.

The plan had been to feed the cheetahs again but this almost didn't happen as we got a call from the lodge while making the trap to say a couple of visiting tourists had requested a last minute feeding. Fortunately for us, we weren't able to get back in time for them. This is a huge relief as I had been looking forward to this evening; we were having beer with the cheetahs. So, once again we're back at the enclosure and as we enter the cheetahs surround us and stamp their feet. We're tense but are reassured it's perfectly safe.  On the platform, this time we delay the feeding and instead sit down in the centre, with the cheetahs eagerly circling hoping for food. It feels like we're breaking all the safety rules: don't show your back and don't make yourself small! We open the beers and relax. Eventually the cheetahs do the same. It turns out to be another high point of the week. A very unusual and extraordinary experience.

After about two hours the final ring of thorns is complete and both cages are in place. We leave a small opening in the bushes to allow future entry with the goat. This left just one more job, to test the trap and step on the trigger. It works. The final structure is vast and satisfying. After days of camara traps, watering plants and even demolition, it was great to build something this big, despite the cuts and scrapes.

With the old enclosure removed, we carry out the very heavy cage that needs four people, one at each corner. The plan for the new trap is create a very large ring of bushes and thorns with a cage at its centre. Extending from this central cage is the trap, which looks very much like the cage, but this has an opening at either end and a pressure trigger that drops a heavy gate at each end, trapping the approaching animal. The surrounding camelthorn prevents the leopard from entering at any other point. So how do we trick the leopard into entering? A goat. We don't have it today, but the plan is to chain a goat in the central cage. The leopard won't get to it but hopefully the temptation will bring it into the trap.

From the shit water we move on to what I found to be one of the more exciting jobs we've had to do: build a leopard trap. The plan is to capture a leopard and collar it with a GPS tracker. But trapping a leopard is far from easy. They've already set one trap, which hasn't worked, so we're redesigning it. This involves us ripping out the existing ring of bushes and installing a new structure. Before doing this we have to chop down a whole load of bushes and collect hundreds of branches of camelthorn. However, while my first go with a machete proved less dangerous than I'd feared, it turns out the plants were themselves the source of danger. Camelthorn is nasty stuff, with thorns that can be up to four inches long. We all got scratched and stabbed slightly as we pulled down branches and dragged them across the stony sand, but eventally Katarina got one impaled through her finger and glove through to the other side. I had been off collecting branches and missed it all....

The afternoon begins as the morning ended, handling poo, but this time back to the orchards and the untreated water. On the way there we drop by a zebra. This one has been rescued and they are hoping to return it to the wild, something much more possible than with carnivores. It's very shy as we enter and only after a few minutes does it approach to drink the milk we've prepared for it. They are hoping one day to drop it off near a herd and with some luck it might be accepted. The afternoon begins as the morning ended, handling poo, but this time back to the orchards and the untreated water. On the way there we drop by a zebra. This one has been rescued and they are hoping to return it to the wild, something much more possible than with carnivores. It's very shy as we enter and only after a few minutes does it approach to drink the milk we've prepared for it. They are hoping one day to drop it off near a herd and with some luck it might be accepted.

Back from the cheetah poo we shower and sit down for a meal of a massive savoury donut filled with beef. It's the perfect comfort food and just what you need after an early start and picking up poo. Like most days, there's an opportunity to have extra and we don't pass up the chance. All week lunch has also been a good chance for us to chat and share stories about our lives back home. Four of us are English and one Italian student. I could easily feel out of place here, being twenty years or more older, but it's never happened.

It's a chore any pet owner knows too well: picking up the poo. But here it's on a different scale. We drive to the cheetah enclosure and work in pairs, one with a bucket to collect what we find. We're looking for scat and animal bones. The area is large but much of the scat and bones are  found nearer the fencing and entrance. We spread out and work in a line carefully looking in bushes and around rocks. We find plenty, especially strewn across the branches of small plants. It's hard and mostly white, from the calcium content. The bones come mostly from what the cheetah are fed but occassionally an unlucky animal might find its way in, never to leave again, except I suppose until we carry out it's remains. We fill three buckets with large bones and scat, all the while under the gaze of the cheetahs that were only a few metres away. All done, we are eager to get back and wash our hands. We hadn't worn any gloves.

We spent an hour or so in the morning going through some more memory cards, organising the photos into animals directories. There was little that interesting. Each set of photos begins with a sign board saying the date and where it is. This is usually followed by hundreds of photos of moving grass, baboons, zebra feeding and the occasional porcupine. Finding a leopard is rare, but that's not unusual. The photos normally end with images of volunteers collecting the memory card. Later in the morning we left for the cheetah enclosure and were treated to a view of meerkats near the entrance spotting for predators. Didn't seem that bothered by us though. Maybe it was them keeping me up last night.

It was a long night of animals calls. We must have heard everything. Baboons are always noisy, but then there were jackals and must have been something scratching away outside out tent. There's not really any fear of anything coming inside but certainly if a baboon really wanted to get inside their long claws wouldn't take long. We have little protection. But despite the long night it was an easier morning and even light by the time we head for breakfast. Somebody had let out the goats so we were greeted on the way there.

There was nothing else planned for the day. We were all exhausted and in dire need of rest. Of course we still got our supper and spent much of the evening sending off photos of our trek up the dunes. It's a day I'll never forget, not least because I'll be looking at the photos for years. Here's two random photos not of dunes. The wildebeest was a very surprising sight. And the cat is not the one who lives in our tent but another that resides in the main camp.

We finish the day with a visit to a rock pool on the way back to the camp. I remain on the rocks. While some dived in, others were more gentle, easing themselves into the freezing water.

It was a two kilometre walk back to the car. Half of this was over the dry clay in bare foot and the second over sand. By the end my feet were exhausted. There was no time to return to the main camp to eat and our plan was to head to a nearby lodge to enjoy a buffet meal in style. Like something from the Hollywood set of Cleopatra this place is designed to look like luxury. Certainly the staff lived up to it and we felt like royalty, alongside many other tourists. And there you go, the Namibian flag.

And here is Big Daddy and Deadvlei from the sky.

At the base of the sand dune and the end of our run is the salt pan of Deadvlei - or dead marsh. The dead trees here could have died maybe 600 years ago, preserved by the dry air. Find a photo montage of Namibia anywhere and it will almost certainly include these trees. They are almost a national symbol. But the trees are small fry to the 50-60 million years this desert might have been here. That's a very long time dead.

From the bottom, after running down, it finally makes sense why there were so many tracks descending from the ridge. The run down is the reason to walk up. This is nature's ultimate fair ground.

It was two and a half hours of hard slog up that ridge of sand. Downhill is different. Doug points at the slope and tells us we're running down. I don't quite believe him at first and wait for the others to make the first move. It doesn't look possible because it's so steep but it's a literal leap of faith and I launch myself down. I don't think I've ever felt joy like that since I was a little kid. Using the pythagorean theorem, the dune is 320 metres high, the horizontal of the slope is just over 600 metres meaning this run is almost 700m. With each leap you seem to defy gravity sinking each time into the sand. It seems to go on forever, and all the while I'm smiling like a five year old at Christmas. There we were up one of the tallest sand dunes in the world and in a matter of a few adrenaline filled minutes, we're at the bottom. I want to go back up.

At the peak I run out of superlatives. Looking down at the ridge we climbed or others around us, the scenery is dreamlike. It's something from a science fiction movie. In fact the Sossusvlei is indeed occasionally the backdrop for Hollywood. I feel like I've been to Mars.

We finally make it to the peak and join Doug and the other two who were here maybe 40 minutes before us. It's a relief to make it and probably just in time. Doug had warned us he would head back down if we took longer than two and a half hours - or something like that. There aren't many people up here and there's no post or flag to say you've reached the peak. After all, the peak might shift a few metres over time. Nothing stays still here.

The ridge zigzags for the final ascent to Big Daddy and at the corner of one of these zigzags the sand rises at an angle that at first seems impossibly steep, like you'd easily slide back down. We rest for a minute and let someone else pass first. It is possible. We begin to climb and indeed you are almost crawling hand and foot trying to cling on as the sand gives way beneath your feet. I wonder if we'll make it and we both struggle. But finally it passes and the ridge returns to normal. These sands shift every night and no two climbs will be identical. Over longer periods the zigzags will shift with the wind and up here the wind is blowing. The stream of people has dropped and while lower down we were passing others who had stopped or were taking a break, carefully stepping around the ridge that is only wide enough for one and a half, here we are more on our own. You no longer see any small children. Ahead, the peak of Big Daddy doesn't look closer but we see less and les...

Either side of the ridge, at the foot of the dunes, are large expanses of dry salty lake beds or marshes. Very occasionally water will feed into this area the turn the ground into a soft mud. As it dries completely flat and white (from the rich content of salt) it creates a surface that strongly reflects the sun adding another layer to the landscape. Despite a drop of a few hundred metres either side and the narrowness of the ridge we are walking, you don't feel any danger whatsoever. That isn't to say you don't take great care not to slip and slipping does seem easy. It's just that the soft texture of the sand and the delicate beauty around you doesn't lend itself to fear. If you did fall, you probably won't be hurt, but it might take a lot of time and effort to claw your way back up.

Halfway up, or is it a quarter way up - I can't tell - the need to photgraph everything is overwhelming. I want to just stop, sit and keep taking pictures, but Doug has given us a tight schedule and we have about two hours to make it up. That seemed very achievable at the bottom, but now it seems like a real struggle.  But it's so damn hard to stop pulling out the camera. By now I have my long lens on and am holding it permanently in my hand, to the point that it hurts. But I really wonder if I will ever see a landscape again as breathtaking as this. You want to stretch out your hand and stroke the distant sand dunes - the beauty is like an itch you can't scratch. Eventually we do start to take more frequent breaks. I am grateful that despite the sun being up, the temperature is not too high and we even keep on multiple layers as we climb.