Dead Vlei is located in the Sossusvlei National Park in Namibia. A vlei can be described as a lake pan. The word has a broad range of translations and can be further explored here. Public transport links to the park aren’t especially great and most travelers choose to stay in one of the luxury camps which provide their own forms of transport.

Dead Vlei was formed when the nearby Tsauchab River flooded, forming several shallow pools that eventually receded when the climate changed. The water was present long enough for Camelthorn trees to take root. Dead Vlei hasn’t flooded in living memory and the specter trunks are nearly 1,000 years old. The extreme aridity of the desert prevents them from decomposing. The towering dunes which rise on every side of the parched runway are believed to be the world’s tallest, some of them exceeding 300 meters (Big Daddy, as it’s called, is the parks largest).

Clinging to life in the basin are beetles, gerbils, ostriches, oryx, grasses, fauna and a few other species. The plants and animals manage to survive off of the morning mist which sweeps in from the Atlantic coast many kilometers away.

Should you ever have the privilege of visiting, be sure to take a trip to the Skeleton Coast, a graveyard for ships and the skeletal remains of beached whales. There is even the occasional pride of lions scavenging this desolate stretch of the Atlantic seaboard.

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