Well hello again, blogging again from South Africa (you'll hear about SA a little later). I'm giving everyone an update on some of the cool craziness that Tracey and I got up to in Namibia!
We left Livingstone and good friends behind in Zambia to head on a Namibian adventure. We started in Windhoek, which is the capital of the country. It was interesting to get to see some high rise buildings, paved roads and working street lights! We only stayed in Windhoek as a hub to get to other places around the country.
Our first stop was Swakopmund, which is a little German-like town right on the ocean. We stayed a quaint little backpackers called Desert Sky which was right downtown, close to the bars, movie theatre and restaurants. We had some nice relaxing beers at the Brauhaus, where a lot of the locals like to go after a long day at work. There we even indulged in some 2 litre German boot beers. DAS BOOT!
One of the highlights of Swakopmund was definitely the sandboarding. I had been looking forward to trying to snowboard down some sand dunes. Boy do you have to work for your fun on this excursion. In order to minimize the environmental impact of this great activity, there were no dune buggies or ATV's to take us up to the top of the dune. Instead we march with our snowboards in our snowboard boots up to the top, strap in and glide down and repeat. It was so much fun, and I was actually pretty good at it, thanks to my Snowboarding background. It felt like a different type of powder snow, and just a bit slower. We also tried lie down boarding, where you litterally lie head first on this hard slippery mat and go down as fast as you can. They even have a speed gun to clock you. The fastest they have seen I think was 84 km/hr. I only got up to 68 and I was dragging my toes in the sand to slow myself down. It was definitely a weird feeling throwing yourself down a sandy dune as fast as you can. They even have a jump set up for the stand up boarding run, but I couldn't build the courage to try it. After we were finished we had a great picnic lunch with free beer!!! I even took a couple for the road.
We opted for a tour to go to Sossuvlei, which is quite difficult to get there because there are no public transport to get there and we are way to cheap to rent a vehicle, let alone guiding it throw all the sand where you need a 4x4. Our guide's name was Morne, and we went with a company called Chameleon Safari's which was super cool. On the way we saw some Oryx, which is one of the most beautiful animals that I have ever seen. I even spotted some Giraffe's hanging out which was cool.
We stayed at Desert camp where there are little huts that have been placed there in the middle of the desert and there is literally nothing around you. It was amazing. At night the ENTIRE sky was covered in stars and you could see shooting star after shooting star. Sossusvlei was amazing too, we got to see where a river had been cut off millions of years ago because massive sand dunes got blown in and circled around the river cutting it off. The first one we saw was called Deadvlei, and there is also Sossusvlei. We walked around the old lake bed and checked out all of the dead trees. That day Tracey and I actually walked up and around a Sand Dune for an hour, before we had to go back to the car to keep going. One of the best things about our tour is that our guide was awesome, but there was also only one other Japanese lady on our tour, so it was really small.
After Sossusvlei we headed back to Windhoek for a night to hang out with our guide and his buddy. They took us around to all of the local bars that they go to and took us on a tour of the city. We took the bus ride from hell to get to Cape Town, but again, that's another story for another blog.
Cheers,
EmJ
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