"Beach, booze, and barbeques keeps you young"

Well my friends, family, loved ones, and other strangers, I am sad to report that we have completed the African portion of our voyage. We packed our days pretty full and time flew by, but there is still so much more I wish we could have done. But clearly I have a lot of updating to do, so in the words of my close personal friend Julie Andrews, lets start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

NAMIBIA! Day 1:
Something I learned about Namibia: not many people know it exists. If you are one of these unenlightened people, go to your map, locate Namibia, contact your nearest travel agent, and book a trip. Seriously. I have just never had so much unceasing pure fun in such a short amount of time. We stayed for three days, and had SAS trips the second two days so the first one we wanted to just eat some good meals of course and go from there. But like I mentioned, few people on our voyage seemed to know anything about Namibia or were even aware of its presence before this trip, so most of us were pretty much at a loss of what to expect from it. Pretty much as soon as we stepped off the ship upon arrival however, Dana and I decided we were going to absolutely love it. I cannot even tell you why, we were docked in a giant lumber/construction port type area and had to walk in the blazing sun about 15 minutes to the gate entrance but it was just such a great atmosphere from the getgo (is that the right phrase?) We had a delicious lunch in this great restaurant called “The Raft” that was on stilts right in the water and we enjoyed a selection of fondue, “snake bites” (beef rump wrapped in bacon), some onion rings of course, and had our first pleasant discovery of the extremely cheap cost of beer, $1.50 for a Heineken or Windhoek- their personal brand. Dana set up a spur of the moment dune boarding trip for us in the afternoon, a popular pastime seeing as Namibia has some of the largest dunes in the world, so it was off to that after lunch. Wayne from Dune 7 picked us up in his charming van and then picked up a few other SASers along the way, and drove us out to dune 7. Now up until right about when we pulled up to the dune I was feeling pretty confident/excited, but then I noticed it was about 400ft and suddenly remembered I have never skied, or been snowboarding, and really am not a fan of physical activity in general, and have an overwhelming phobia of falling, and there was a few moments of panic. But suddenly I was on an atv flying up the back of the dunes desperately gripping a stranger named marcus, and before I knew it the only way down was riding strapped to a board at neckbreaking pace, which actually might have been more like the speed of a powerwalk but I felt like I could have broken the sound barrier at the time. Anyway, they gave us a quick briefing on technique: knees bent, lean forward, one hand out and one in the sand, heels down to go and toes down to stop. Well I found that it was just as successful to throw yourself bellyflop spreadeagle into the sand to stop so that worked out pretty well for me once I got the system down. But really it was SO much fun, I mean it I am really not one for physical activity or anything slightly risky or challenging, but this was great. I even got over the NDE’s on the back of the atvs that took us up to the tops. It was also a great bonding experience with the other people who came with us, once you’ve seen each other tumbling down a dune screaming and trying to shake sand out of places sand should never go, you feel much closer than you actually are.
We met up with our newfound friends that evening after de-sanding and headed out to Swokupmund, a popular nearby German Town. We were docked in Walvis Bay, and as Namibia was colonized by Germany there were some quaint little German Town areas that had more markets and restaurants than the bay. We headed to this bar/restaurant called Tiger Reef, which was a neat place right on the water- all sand floors and picnic table style dining. There was a wedding party in one section and live entertainment who sang nothing but American music such as cheeseburger in paradise and the one and only, Bruce Springsteen. Not only did everyone end up bonding with the wedding party, but Dana managed to make a new facebook friend right there in the bar on her blackberry who we are trying to convince now to come to the states. We also met a really interesting man who had come in 500km that day from the bush where he lived to try and find food for his family. He sat down at our table and explained that he was an artist and would hike in during the day and try to earn money doing portraits then build a shelter at night before he could head back to the bush. It was really interesting talking to him, he was learning English just by coming to places like that and talking to people, his native language was a form of Bantu which had the clicks and he tried to teach us how to say some things but man those clicks are tricky. And also, his grandfather was the man who made the movie “The Gods Must be Crazy”. I was very excited about this but I don’t think anyone else knew what he was talking about. So all in all the night proved to be fun AND educational! Who would have thought.

more later, bed time.