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Published: February 15th 2007
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Quadbiking in sandhills, Swakomund, NamibiaTuesday morning saw me doing a spot of shopping, then taking a walk around the township of Swakopmund. Had brunch at our hotel & spent a few hours on the internet before meeting up with the group to go quadbiking at three. Opted for a semi manual bike, like in Jinja rather than an automatic, but was alot more nervous about going up the big sandhills. Began in the fast group, felt a bit better when I dropped back to the middle group & then somehow ended up in the slow automatic group. Wasn't really enjoying the experience at first because I was so paranoid about rolling the damned thing that I wasn't getting enough speed up the sandhills & started skipping them. When we stopped for the first break, the instructor told me off for skipping the hills & explained that I needed to speed up as the faster momentum would get me up & over easier. Slowly I started trying it & became more & more comfortable as time wore on.
After the second break overlooking the ocean, I skipped back into the middle group & was beginning to enjoy the extra speed so much I wished I
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Nicolle quadbiking in sandhills, Swakomund, Namibia was back in the fast group. It felt awesome fanging the back wheels out from side to side & flying up & down the sides of the sandhills; alas it all came to an end too soon. Had a few beers back at the hotel, then got Springbok steak & pizza takeaway from Neopolitans (again), ate dinner in the room & had an early night.
Wednesday was a quite uneventful day as I spent the majority of it at an internet cafe, desperately trying to catch up on my blog. It seems like weeks since I had time to spend at a place with fast connection, so I decided to make the most of it in Swakopmund. Did manage to take some time out though & had lunch with Al at a nearby Cafe.
Another quiet night in house & once again had Springbok steak & pizza from Neopolitans for dinner. I know it's not very original & one should experience new foods in foreign places, but I swear Springbok is the best steak I've ever eaten & Neopolitans cooks it to perfection every time; I just couldn't help myself!
En route to picking up dinner
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Quadbiking in sandhills, Swakomund, Namibia I returned some dishes from my room to the restaurant adjoining the hotel & found most of the girls from the truck in there pissed. Some had met up for lunch & began drinking then, so when I ran into them at dinner time, they were well passed healthy. Received invitations to join them, but declined as they were far too gone to catch up with & there's nothing worse than being around a group of drunk people when you are completely sober!
Up early Thursday to get in a little more internet time before we departed in the early afternoon. Caught up with all the gossip from last nights drink fest 2007. Seems some of the girls really went all out with one trying to go to bed behind the bar, another throwing up on the floor of her room & a couple of others also spending time with the old white porcelein bowl.
Rach, Blair, Nat, Balck Bonnie & I had lunch in the same Cafe Al & I had visited yesterday & I had the yummiest Chai I've had outside of India. Went back to the internet, then met back at the truck for
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Nicolle quadbiking in sandhills, Swakomund, Namibia a two o'clock departure; needless to say there were a few people nursing sore heads...
The day was extremely hot & we drove through to our second bush camp in Namibia, which turned out to be in a dry riverbed. I had a few drinks & helped my cookgroup make Ceasar Salad for dinner; another delicious success. As dinner was served quite late, many people headed off to bed, however I stayed up with the rest & played Millionaire, which Natalie & I won - yay. No scorpion sightings at this camp, so I went to bed feeling much safer; probably due to the amount of alcohol consumed during the course of the evening.
Early start on Friday morning to first stop at Apple Pie shop in Solitaire. I settled on a drink because we'd only had breakfast a couple hours prior & we relaxed for an hour or so before getting back on the road. Arrived at our campsite in Sesrium before the full heat of the day kicked in & spent the next few hours swimming in the ice cold pool & keeping out of the hot desert sun. The place was just sand &
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Nicolle quadbiking in sandhills, Swakomund, Namibia our campsite area was circled by a small wall to prevent tents being blown away when sandstorms hit, which is apparently quite frequently.
Mid afternoon we set off in the truck to Sussusviei, which is where the Kalahari & Namib deserts meet. We were supposed to be collected in 4WD's & taken further into the area, but when we arrived the drivers were nowhere to be found. Some of the group took a walk in the general direction the vehicles would have taken us, but I decided it was a crazy idea to be wandering in fourty three degree heat & so stayed with the truck. I was joined by a swarm of bees who'd decided they wanted to drink our sweat, so Robert filled a container with Fanta to distract them away from us. It pretty much did the trick, but a couple of the girls still got bitten; fortunately neither was allergic to bees.
Continued onto the famous Dune Fourty Five for 'sunset,' which actually turned out to be prior to sunset viewing. I would have been happy to climb up to watch the sunset, but we actually had to be back in the truck beforehand
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Bushcamping in riverbed, Namibia as the park closed one hour afterwards, so I only went up part way & took a few photos. As sunset was just before eight, we returned to camp well after dark, had a quick, simple dinner & turned in for the night.
Early start on Suturday due to almost six hundred kilometre drive. Weather became scorching early & was cooking by the time we pulled into Bethanie for lunch. Bethanie is a small one horse town who's shops close down around lunch time due to the heat - very handy indeed. Missed out on sandwiches because there wasn't a loaf of bread around & fortunately we didn't arrive any later or we'd have missed out on lunch too!
Visited Fish River Canyon en route to camp. It's the second biggest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon in the USA & had amazing views. I didn't fancy standing around in the afternoon sun & was gutted when the truck drove up the hill to the viewing platform, about one kilometre away without us. We had no choice but to walk up, me grumbling all the way because I didn't have enough water & was drenched
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Rach massaging Nat at bushcamp, Namibia in sweat thanks to the fourty plus degree desert temperatures.
Continued onto our camp at Ais Ais, which is famous for it's hot springs, although God knows why we were visiting in the summertime. Went for a quick swim which was more like a bath, had a lovely dinner at the restaurant & a few drinks afterwards. Rach, Al, Blair & I hung around until they insisted on closing the bar, then returned to camp, swigged on my bottle of Jack Daniels & crashed out on our roll mats under the stars.
We were due to leave the hot springs place at eleven on Sunday morning, however plans changed & at the last minute we decided to do a full day of driving so we could do a wine tour in Stellenbosch tomorrow. After a couple hours we passed Orange River, where we were originally supposed to camp & I don't think anything was there except a muddy river. After crossing the border in to South Africa & twelve hours of driving, we arrived at the campsite well after dark, prepared a quick 'n' easy dinner & slept under the stars. I much prefer sleeping out on
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Nicolle at Tropic of Capricorn, Namibia my roll mat to being inside a tent; the feeling of freedom is awesome as long as you can put the thought of creepy crawlies out of mind...
We had an early start on Monday to drive the three & a half hours required to join our wine tour. My group was on cooking duties & we'd made sandwiches last night to eat on the truck for breakfast this morning. Not everybody was thrilled at this, but it meant we could get off quickly without the cook group having to get up osbcenely early to make toast, or something equally as exciting. We arrived a little late for the tour, but because we were such a large group, they waited for us. There were four other people also joining us, who were appeased with extra champagne whilst they waited.
The starting winery was Villiera where our guide opened the Champagne bottle old style by slicing off the top with a sword! We got a quick lesson on how to be a wine snob & then were off & tasting. I bought a bottle of port, then we headed off to Beyerskloof, which was a lovely winery, but
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Becky's self portrait, Namibia I didn't enjoy the wines as much as at Villiera. Lunch was at a cafe, followed by a visit to a local chocolate shop for some sampling, then off to our third winery Fairview. Not only was there wine to sample, but cheese as well & we spent so much time gorging that the fourth & final winery had to be skipped. I purchased a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz blend & a dessert Sweet Red for dad to go with the port purchased from Villiera. To make up for not going to the last winery, the tour guides bought each of the two mini vans a couple of chilled bottles of white wine, which we polished off on the way home.
Romy changed her mind about staying locally in Stellenbosch overnight & instead we were dropped off into Cape Town a day early. She managed to get half the group into Ashanti Lodge & the rest of us stayed at a hostel called Mountain Manor just a few blocks away, which was lovely. I stayed in the Manor & to top off an already fantastic day, we ordered pizza & snacks for dinner & chilled out watching movies for
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Desert sand dunes, Namibia the rest of the evening.
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