6. Deadvlei: The Desert That Looks Like a Flat Painting
Location: Namibia
Black tree trunks. A pale floor. A towering wall of orange sand. Deadvlei has such bold blocks of color that photographs can look like drawings made with only a handful of crayons. In certain light, the dune behind the trees loses its sense of depth and becomes an almost perfectly flat backdrop.
The trees are the remains of a much wetter chapter in this part of Namibia. Water once reached the pan and allowed them to grow. Shifting dunes eventually cut off the water supply, leaving a grove that has been dead for centuries.
The dry conditions have helped preserve the trunks long after the living canopy disappeared. Their twisted branches now stand above the light-colored clay, surrounded by huge dunes. Look closely at one of the “paintings” and you can often spot small textures in the sand that restore the missing depth. Until then, your eyes may insist that the orange background cannot possibly be a real hill.
