Merit: A Night at Deadvlei. The night before returning to Windhoek, we spent several hours at Deadveli. The moon was bright enough to illuminate the sand dunes in the distance, but the skies were still dark enough to clearly see the milky way and magellanic clouds. Deadveli means “dead marsh. The camelthorn trees are believed to be about 900 years old, but have not decomposed because the environment is so dry. (Photo and caption by Beth McCarley/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

A man lights up his cigarette with the flames of a bus burned by anti-government demonstrators during a protest against the constitutional amendment PEC 55, which limits public spending, in front of Brazil's National Congress in Brasilia, Brazil December 13, 2016. (Photo by Adriano Machado/Reuters)

City workers transport a load of sandbags to be used in re-enforcing a levee gate past the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Station May 11, 2011 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Mississippi river at Vicksburg is expected to crest at a record 58.5 feet. Heavy rains have left the ground saturated, rivers swollen, and have caused widespread flooding in Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

People pose near a new Banksy artwork in Rothesay Avenue, Nottingham, Britain on October 17, 2020. (Photo by Carl Recine/Reuters)

American television personality, author and former model Brandi Glanville is seen on June 7, 2018 in Los Angeles, CA. (Photo by GP/Star Max/GC Images)

Nathan Sawaya is a New York-based artist who creates awe-inspiring works of art out of some of the most unlikely things. His recent global museum exhibitions feature large-scale sculptures using only toy building blocks. LEGO bricks to be exact. Photo: “Blue man sits in chair”. (Photo by Nathan Sawaya/The Art of the Brick)

A former living goddess Kumari, middle, watches the Indra Jatra festival, an eight-day festival that honors Indra, the Hindu god of rain, in Kathmandu, Nepal, Friday, September 13, 2019. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

A view of a stampede is seen during a New Year's celebration on the Bund, a waterfront area in central Shanghai, December 31, 2014. The stampede killed at least 35 people and injured 43 during New Year's Eve celebrations in Shanghai, on the city's famed waterfront tourist strip known as the Bund, authorities said. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)