With the confusion of a night interrupted at four in the morning we went to nowhere. We had arranged with officials of Namib Sky Balloon desert somewhere and there, with the mist of dawn announcing the day, saw the silhouettes of two huge balloons.
Denis is a Congolese who has spent half his life searching for peace and half enjoying it in the basket of a balloon. He and his wife gave us one morning on the red dunes of Namibia and we went to the meeting not knowing how to fit the opportunity presented to us. Had not yet risen when the sun started to rise in one of the balloons. The landscape was presenting us gently as we drank perspective. Gradually I came to realize where we were, the universe of sand began to take shape under our feet.
Ballooning sedative causes a sensation. We were going nowhere, floated. A 800 meters above the Namib no noise, and flies, or motors, no wind… the world remains muted from there and the image of the yellow fields of dunes and the sea does not cause vertigo because the desert, from as far, is as painted. Everything is a lie from a balloon.
We moved slowly in cart, changing position to frame the sunrise, smiling without talking just, order not to disturb the quiet of the morning. Namib means nothing in the local dialect and flying nowhere understood a concept of beauty without artifice.
diamond institutions guard their treasure so zealously that even flying over the desert can become a suspicious activity
So maybe, I do not fit the simplicity of the desert with dementia that produce diamonds covered by sand. Namibia has thrived in part because of its diamonds and partly because not many people to share the revenue from these stones, they are merely crystallized carbon. Today the government and institutions diamond saved his treasure so jealously that even flying over the desert can become suspicious activity.
Denis told us that it was important not to land beyond the barrier dunes, the sand. One reason is obvious: landing is dangerous in that area and there is access to very complicated. The other reason has to do with suspicion of government. The territory is protected by dunes considered a space where you can find diamonds. A few years ago, a plane with problems had to make an emergency landing on the dunes. The survivors, after being treated for his injuries, were arrested for being in protected territory.
In some areas of Namibia is prohibited to stop the car and walk a few meters along the desert. Such is the obsession with the diamond that I ended up caught and kept looking around me for if he found a spark with which to retire forever. But, clean air that morning of greed. We had all we could take a walk: a plain gold, red sand barrier, distant profile of the mountains and the sun conducting the orchestra. All that could be in that balloon. Some antelope grazed down there, also saw the silhouette of leftovers elongated projecting Oryx.
We had all we could take a walk: a plain gold, red sand barrier, distant profile of the mountains and the sun conducting the orchestra.
Moreover struck me about the plain circles agujeraban, circles everywhere. Some say it is a fungus that ruin pastures, others speak of saline land and properties there are also theories that defend alien to justify its origin. In any case, What I found was that communion alien magic between the rising sun and the earth life.
Daylight playing with sand. In the Valley of Sossusvlei desert colors moving van, a pale red to a fiery orange, violet and purple tones, garnets and yellow. When we landed, against the barrier dunes, agency workers rushed to cushion the landing while we were trying to absorb a unique experience forever.
Later desayunaríamos us at the best restaurant in the world: one half of table nothing, but woe! There, nothing is everything.
