The dry, the arid and the dusty. Namibian landscapes.

I don’t think I knew what amor vacui really is until I got here. I mean, how could I possibly know, coming from the plains of the well measured and highly priced square meters of European cities. 

In here, your criteria of perceiving distances are (to put it mildly and without swearing) completely useless. Since actual something (like little town, village or a petrol station) appears only every 200-400 km, you are facing the real and glorious vastness of nothingness. Experiencing nothingness reveals the tricky ways of majestic nature playing with your faulty sense of observation. You try to capture gigantic mountain with your zoomy-lensy camera, but the mountain wouldn’t smile for the photo. Although, believe me, it is laughing its ass off - you try to grasp, with all your apertures available, something that is hundred kilometers away, while your lensy eyes tell you it’s just out there -  really, really close. You think – there is the ocean behind this plain! Nope, that’s just the endless horizon of dry landscapes laying and lying in front of your eyes with their endless appearances. Colours fade out and become something new and unknown. The unknown will dress up as something familiar. A mirage.

Sky is clear and cloudless every single day …. Now, ain’t that suspicious? One of these days, I’m telling you, you’ll see the cloud  - overcast, surely. If it was only that easy.  It shall not be a cloud, apparently it is a mist of dust reflecting the sunlight. When you are in it, let me be clear here, it does look like a cloud combined with grey nothingness. I’m not entirely sure if this phenomenon has been granted a professional definition. For now, we shall call it cloudistness. When you feel like a weather prevision pro and you start recognizing cloudistsness, you find yourself at a crossroads with your recognition. You are, in fact, at the shores of the cold Atlantic and this is not cloudistness but the actual mist. You will feel it soon enough as you’d need to replace your  top with the winter jacket. On the side note – you will not find any pictures from my coastal adventures. Reason being – the clouds and mist were so thick that I did not see anything. So wouldn’t you. I’m not so sure now – was I really there? Now -  let me come clean in here -   there has been a time of sunshine and perfect visibility. However, I decided to ignore it and stayed in the hotel enjoying the pleasures of sleeping in the actual bed (not tent). I pushed my tactic of pretending that I did not know when the check out time was to its limits. And so what…I was a little late and certainly did not have time to see anything but my hotel room.  There is only so much you can do to heal from your camping traumas.

Try closing your eyes and doze off for a while.  As you wake up, you will most certainly open your eyes to something completely different than you’ve seen an hour ago. Dry plains will turn into savannas. Savannas will turn into cone mountains made of little stones. The little stones will turn into huge rock formations that will pretend to be mountains. Small rocks and huge stones will come together and form chains of the actual mountains. Chains of mountains will turn into rocky plateaus. Rocky plateaus will reveal aged canyons. In the aged canyons you will see rivers that seem to be almost too distant to be believed into existence in this dry, arid country. But then, as you observe sun coming up, the colour of the water will reflect the sky and rock formations brightened by the orange morning light. You’ll take a photo of it -  something in it will look like mistake –  are these breakfast leftovers on my lens?  On the edges of immense shadow cover, there is a tiny reflection of this crazy blue sky and madly coloured rocks. As real and as clear as it can be, just to prove that its existence must be believed.
Rocks will turn into dust. Dust will turn into sand. Sand will form dunes. Dunes will form rocks. Rocks will deform due to the power of extreme wind, cold and heat.  And so it goes. A real piece of art. An artisan experience.