NAMIBIA!!!

Namibia

So, this is finally my post for when we were in Namibia. Sorry it took so long, we only had one day at sea before we got to Cape Town. We were in Namibia from Saturday February 14 until Monday February 16. 

Saturday

We docked at a very industrial pier in the city of Walvis Bay, a small city with not much going on. We arrived to a large group of young African girls singing African songs to us from the pier. It was very cool having the whole ship watch and listen to them from the decks of the ship. From Walvis Bay, me and a friend on the ship from Northbrook, and four girls went to Swakopmund, a much bigger, German, city about 35 KM from Walvis Bay. (Before being ruled by South Africa, Namibia was controlled by Germany). Pretty much everyone from the ship who wasn’t on an SAS trip ended up in Swakopmund. We soon learned why Namibia is known as the desert extreme sports capital of the world. About an hour after we had lunch at a German restaurant (I had a cool chicken dish), we were in the middle of the Namib Desert quad-biking (ATV’ing). For about two hours we ATV’d up and down enormous sand dunes at full throttle. We all had our own vehicles. In addition to being one of the most exciting things I have ever done, it was extremely cool to be able to look one way at desert as far as you can see and then look the other at the ocean. After ATV’ing, we got our keys to an apartment that the girls with us had arranged to rent for the two nights. For only $100 US per night (total, not per person), we had an absolutely breathtaking two bedroom apartment, with full kitchen, and balcony literally ON the beach. Once we settled in, we walked the couple blocks back to the town’s center to a pub to watch a rugby game. Having had no prior experience with the sport of rugby, none of us were too sure what we were watching, but the enthusiasm and intense emotions of everyone in the bar made it a very fun experience. For dinner, we went to a really cool restaurant situated on the sand/beach. The food wasn’t anything special, but the atmosphere was extremely unique and a lot of fun. There was even a wedding going on at the same time. After dinner, pretty much the entire ship ended up at one of the few bars/pubs in Swakopmund.

 

Sunday

The next morning, we woke up and made breakfast in the apartment. It was great to be able to do some cooking after having not in such a long time. We made eggs with peppers and onions and French toast. They turned out pretty good. After walking around the town for a while, we met up with three other guys from SAS that had spent the previous night camping in the desert on an SAS trip. Soon after, our group (now 9 people) had been looking forward to going skydiving. After working everything out with a reputable and recommended company we were driven out to the middle of the desert to the company’s makeshift “runway”with a little plane waiting to pack four people in it. Over the next several hours, two people at a time, would go in the plane tandem (attached to a professional) and within 20 minutes would be little dots falling from the sky. 7 of the 9 of us (not me of course) went skydiving. Everyone absolutely loved the experience and while watching them one at a time I thought I might regret not doing it too. But now, I have no regrets and think it is absolutely insane to jump out of a plane. Me and the other guy who didn’t jump got to drive back to meet everyone at the company’s office in the owner’s dune buggy, which was really cool to literally fly over sand dunes as fast as the buggy could go. After going back to the apartment to shower/change/get ready, our group went to dinner at a very nice restaurant called Napoletana. Most of us chose to be adventurous and order some kind of game. I had the game stir-fry, which included oryk, ostrich, and kudu. It was really delicious and I didn’t get sick afterwards. After dinner we hung out at a Cuban club/bar for a while, again with a lot of SAS students. When we were going back to the apartment, we walked along the beach and had an unbelievable view of the stars that were incredibly clear and actually went all the way down to the horizon.

 

Monday

On Monday, after waking up we got everything together to go back to the ship in Walvis Bay. After getting back to the ship at around noon, we went to Dune 7, the largest set of sand dunes in Namibia and also the center for extreme stuff. We planned to go sandboarding (snowboarding in the desert) and zorbing. Zorbing is when you are inside a huge inflatable ball and you roll down hills and things. Unfortunately the zorb “popped”during the group before us, so we only went sandboarding. Having never snowboarded before, and obviously never sandboarded, I had a very tough time trying to figure out what I was doing. But nonetheless, I had a lot of fun balancing for a few seconds before flipping/rolling down a monstrous sand dune and getting covered in sand again and again. We got back to the ship from sandboarding at around 4pm to end our time in Namibia.

 

We are now back on the ship on the way to Mauritius. Cape Town was absolutely amazing, hands down one of the greatest places I have ever visited on so many levels. We just had our first Global Studies exam, which I can’t say went very well, but that was the consensus between pretty much the entire ship. We get to Mauritius on Friday morning and will leave Friday night for India. 

 

As usual, I hope to have my post for Cape Town up soon, for sure before Mauritius.