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Published: April 9th 2007
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Sat 7th
Drove to a cape fur seal colony, thousands of sea lions for as far as you can see, very noisy and even more smelly. Lots of pups around as well so very cute- once over the smell. They have so many there, they have to cull some of them and you can buy fur wallets etc from a little shop- def not my thing.
Then onto Swakopmund- Heini’s home town- and back into a hostel. We booked our activities and then wandered around town which has a German feel to it, which was dead as it is Easter weekend. In the evening we went to an Italian for dinner which had huge portions- I ended up taking half my pizza home for tomorrow. But the ribs were the most impressive lump of meat I’ve ever seen- and they classed them as baby ribs but it was almost half a pig on a plate.
Sun 8th
Decided I’d do a skydive in the morning as I was disappointed that I didn’t get the video in Australia. They picked up 11 of us in the morning but it was all a bit slow so
Hannah and I didn’t jump till 2.30. I got the video that was attached to the tandem masters hand and my face is flopping all over the place with the G-force and my pig tails were hitting him in the face. The next day we found out that one jump had gone wrong and 2 people had died the day before with that company (one staff member and one client) I was a bit annoyed that they hadn’t told us to give us the choice whether to jump or not.
At 3.30 we went with Heini on his township tour of the area where he grew up- Mondessa. We visited the local market/restaurant and tried a number of delicacies including mupani (caterpillar grubs) (well I didn’t) and some maize drink that tasted of sick. His youngest brother Pelenga who is 18 joined us and I spoke a lot to him about what he wanted to do and if he missed Heini when he was away- which he did. We went to a local pub and then to his mums where we were greeted with dancing. We sat out in his back yard to a feast of various local dishes
including the staple dish of pap (made out of maize) nothing to my taste but it was interesting to see what they eat and she had also provided little choc eggs as it was Easter Sunday. After dinner we saw some more traditional dancing from his tribe in the north where the women wear bug skirts that billow out when they spin. After that the local kids showed us some of there dances- they can certainly move there hips. While we were waiting for the taxi’s Hannah and I joined the children dancing- I held Heini’s baby sister Maggie most of the time but when she wanted to be put on the floor to dance at just 2 and a half she was an amazing dancer.
Mon 9th
Almost everyone went sandboarding this morning. It was a long walk up the dunes and fairly quick coming down. I managed to link my turns but could only fit in 4 turns before getting to the bottom. I was brave and went over the jump but didn’t land it. As well as the snowboarding on sand they also had pieces of chipboard that we lay on
and headed down the dune on reaching speeds of 65km/h! They were loads of fun but again over very quickly before the walk up.
In the afternoon 10 of us went quad biking over the dunes. It was beautiful. There were about 30 people in all and they split us up into 4 groups- I went in the fastest group and we went speeding up the edge of the dunes before turning and coming back down (bit like a snowboarder going up and down one side of a halfpipe). After 15 minutes I turned to Nick and said I’m coming back again tomorrow.
In the eve we went to a pub to look at the sandboarding video that we all got given included in the price- it is quite amusing and shows Matt landing the jump. After that Nick, Helen, Stella, Steve and I went to a really nice restaurant called the lighthouse where Nick had a 20cm high lighthouse burger- for a country in Africa where people are starving they're not stingy on there food portions.
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Welcome home meal
I am making a shopping list and off to Asda - caterpillar grubs, goats heads.....