Most mornings we're on the road by 08.00 but today is different:

- 04.30, a wake-up knock of the door of my room
- 04.50, a greasy plate of fried food greets me for breakfast
- 05.10, we're on the road, in darkness.

As the sun rises, clouds and the surrounding mountains are turned a rich, salmon pink. There are a couple of other cars on the road, all heading in the same direction - towards the dunes.

From the entrance of the Namib-Naukluft Park it's a further 70km to Sossusvlei (a 'vlei' being a dried, clay pan) in the middle of the vast sea of shifting sand, and the only area accessible to man.

We reach the famous Dune 45 at 07.30. It's already incredibly hot and the shadows on the desert - which everyone wants to capture - are already ebbing away. We drive on, exchanging our vehicle for a 4x4; it's deep, moving sand from here.

We're surrounded in all directions by soft, whale-humped red dunes, rising to hundreds of metres, and pull over. I walk in the direction of a low dune with vegetation when Charly tells me to stop, step backwards and move slowly back to the Landrover. A male Gemsbok (Oryx) is in the shadow of the tree, 4 metres away. They can be aggressive. We drive further, again I step out, narrowly missing standing on a snake which moves between my feet.

This seemingly barren landscape is rich with wildlife. An incredible, adapted ecosystem lives here and the sand is covered in tracks - of beetles, lizards, snakes, antelope, birds - delicate and fleeting in the iron-red grains.

I climb a 300m dune, to see the vlei from above. I'm the only person there, with beetles scuttling on the hot sand and down the slopes.