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Published: February 13th 2010
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Swakopmund
It’s the Weekend!
Swakopmund {
Whoever came up with a name like Swakopmund??? } brands itself “The Adrenaline Capital of Namibia” with a number of Adventure Sports on offer.
We are in Swakopmund for a long weekend and we don’t have to put up any tents. We’re in dormitory rooms at the
Swakop Lodge. While we are here we are encouraged to sign up for sky-diving, sand-boarding and other such sports. Really I should be looking for “The Horlicks Capital of Namibia” but I sign up for a Dolphin Cruise and a Quad-Biking session.
Friday Night is Party Night
The town of
Swakopmund is bigger than I expected. A lot of it is quite new and modern-looking but there are still some of the old German colonial buildings surviving. A lot of the businesses are geared to the tourist industry with the expected bars, restaurants, souvenir shops and adventure sports businesses. There’s even a Wimpy, a KFC and a supermarket selling Marmite.
Quite a few of the restaurants serve game meat. On the first night there I try a stir-fry with bits of springbok, onyx and kudu in. The next night
I’m more adventurous and order a springbok steak - it tastes quite similar to venison. On the final night there I’m less adventurous and settle for a pizza and then manage to get a couple of Korean pancakes Himem has cooked back at the dormitories.
It seems that Friday night is party night in Swakopmund and Swakop Lodge is the place to be. We find ourselves in the lodge’s disco until the early hours. Another sign that I am getting old is that I don’t recognise any of the tunes being played - except the one that is played about six times during the course of the night.
Quad Biking
Most of us have decided to have a go at quad-biking. There are a variety of bikes and level of difficulty to choose from. I pick an automatic bike with L-plates and stabilisers and head out on the Noddy route. Unfortunately we have casualties when Alan falls off and breaks his collar bone and then I manage to crash into the back of Vanessa at speed. Fortunately the only damage done is to the bike and not to her. We are out on the dunes
for nearly 3 hours and travel more than 20 km from Swakopmund.
Dolphins
The next day I sample the Dolphin Cruise. I’m looking forward to it because I can’t remember ever having seen dolphins before if they weren’t in a large glass tank and performing tricks. The trip goes out on the Sunday morning with about eight of us on a small boat. There are no life jackets provided but I’m reassured by he fact that Helen once life-saved a pair of pyjamas at her local swimming pool as a child.
We do manage to see quite a few dolphins as the boat’s engine makes them randy and they swim alongside the boat. We also see large numbers of cormorants flying in formation - I can’t find out why the cormorants are attracted here in such large numbers.
The trip also takes us to a seal colony - there is such a large number of seals here that every year 50,000 seals are culled. A few of the seals are so domesticated that one even comes onto the back of the boat and poses for photographs.
The highlight of the boat trip, of
course, is when we pass
Walvis Bay and the skipper of our boat points out the house where Brad and Angelina {
I think they’re “celebrities”} stayed in Namibia. {
Perhaps they came to buy a baby?}.
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