Bring on the World Cup and Swakopmund, Namibia!

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June 10th

Sleeping on the truck sounds like such a great idea before you goto bed, and it really is, but the sacrifice is waking up in the morning covered in morning dew. It’s not the most pleasant, it’s cold and wet and you don’t feel like you’re going ever be dry again.

So after a semi-miserable morning wake up we sat around the remnants of the fire and tried warming up with tea and toast while talking about what the day had in store for us. To make the morning that much more…experience-filled the truck was stuck in the sand again. That meant that Farron, Nicio, Luke and I got a thick layer of sand on us to compliment the morning dew that was still drying. No big deal though, just not ideal morning labor (is there such thing as ideal morning labor?).

We got on the road and headed west, towards what is called the Skeleton Coast. It holds the name because of all the ships that have been abandoned and left on the coast to rust away. But before we got the coast there was more great landscape to cover and enjoy. The weather was unforgiving though and so a large portion of the drive towards the coast we had the window flaps up, this isn’t very conducive for photo taking! I was able to get a few before we had decided to keep the cold winds from the Benguela Airstream (comes from the Antarctic) from entering the truck. Afterwards I fell asleep and an hour later I woke up and looked outside to see the Atlantic Ocean!

On one side of the truck was a vast desert with shrubs here and there and on the otherside was the ocean. Before we long stopped at a very old and rusted oil rig, who knows how long it had been there but it was surreal to see it in essentially the middle of no where. I took some photos and Paul even found some feline paw prints in the sand, and they didn’t look they had been there long (but who knows, my animal tracking skills aren’t quite what they used to be since living as a mountain man in the Catskills). We also found a cool sand lizard that Dafydd, Paul and I were able to surround and get some good photos of.

An hour or so later we arrived at Cape Cross, a place famous for it’s seal colony. We had some lunch there, left over oryx game meat and curry stew from the night before, yum! I decided to not pay the N$40 (N$=Namibian Dollars) and goto the seal colony, it didn’t really interest me, I had already seen them at the beginning of my trip in California and it was free there! Kelly and David also opted out so we walked down to the beach and treaded lightly over millions of mussels shells that were on the beach. We still saw the seal colony from about a mile away and avoided the smells that eminated from their home. (Apparently there are even dead seals on the beach along with all the excrement and everything that goes along with that is smelly). I took photos and enjoyed the sun while looking out over the ocean.

Before long we were in the truck again heading down the coast to Swakopmund, Namibia. We would be there for the next four nights and we all looked forward to a bit of relaxation in one spot before being whisked away to another part of Namibia. We arrived in Swakopmund around three or four in the afternoon and were all impressed with the town that had been colonized and developed by Germans some years ago. Once in town we all headed to the Swakop Lodge to see a DVD of all the activities the area had to offer. Sandboarding, quadbiking, skydiving, deepsea fishing and desert tours are the most common for us tourists. After watching the video and deciding what we wanted to do (only sandboarding for me, I have to budget otherwise I’ll be broke by the time I get to Cairo and the blog will get very boring for you, Dear Reader, dumpster diving wouldn’t be too interesting now would it??) we unpacked our things from the truck and got situated in our respective rooms.

Showered, shaved, and cleaned up we all headed to Napolitano’s Restaurant just down the street. The eleven of us had a fantastic meal together, some of us had game meat like oryx steaks and springbok medallions, while others ate tasty pizzas and pasta. It was the perfect dinner and turned out to be a great night. After dinner a few of us headed back to the Swakop Lodge and had a couple beers and played a few games of pool before heading back to our rooms and getting some sleep. The world cup was on the verge of kicking off and it was the talk of the town before we curled up in our beds and dreamt of freekicks, yellow cards, and goals.

Hope you enjoy the photos and post! Until next time, Hakuna Matata and Pura Vida!

-Brendan “Avila” Mahoney


June 11th

Everyone in the group slept in as I recall it, it had been a while since we could do so and we all took advantage of this. Wendy, Nicio, Luke, Hayley and I shared a dorm room while the two couples (Bridget and Paul, David and Kelly) upgraded to private rooms along with Dafydd. Being the tour guide and driver Farron got his own room as well, lucky guy!

After we crawled out of bed most of us made our way to the upstairs bar/lounge area to watch the World Cup kick off. There was confusion of when the games and ceremony would start (Namibia is an hour behind South Africa) but we got it all sorted out and watched the opening ceremony while we shivered in the upstairs area. The Benguela Airstream is quite cold! Seeing that we needed to warm up the owner of the establishment, a nice guy named Francois, gave us a few shots of ginger liqueur which did the trick. Nicio, Luke and I played a few games of pool after the opening ceremony while others in the group came and went and waited for the first game to kick off.

In case you didn’t know or you just don’t care, South Africa ended up drawing against Mexico in the first match of the World Cup. It was an exciting game that could have gone either way. By the time the game was over everyone was fully engrossed in the World Cup, even non-football fans. After the match we loitered around the bar and played more pool, trying to stay warm in the Swakopmund cold.

A few of us headed down to the grocery store to stock up on bread and lunch meats, fruits and vegetables. Nothing exciting happened really, Dear Reader. Later on in the night a few of us regrouped, Nicio, Wendy, Luke, Hayley and I went down to another hotel and bar to watch the French play Uruguay. The place turned out to be a lot classier than we had expected and after the bar tender saw that I was texting Farron to come watch the match, she put the kabash on our little get together and said the bar was closing at 7:30. So we headed down to a place called Kuckis to watch the match, taking our bottle of wine with us. It was a boring game and again, nothing really exciting happened. Post match Luke and Hayley returned to the lodge while Wendy, Nicio and I made it back to Napolitano’s to have a bit of a wine and dine. We had some good laughs and made some new friends a couple Irish women who were on a three week holiday in Namibia. (Uruguay supporting Irish women, after the Henry hand ball fiasco that kept Ireland from getting into the World Cup!).

After some pizza and wine we made it back to the Gruner Kranz/Swakop Lodge and head another beer with the Irish. They were stand up comedians back home I swear, they had Nicio and I laughing constantly! So after a beer with them and a few laughs we each retired to our rooms for a good night’s sleep. Sandboarding and an important match between the USA and England was on the cards for the next day and we all looked forward to it.

Hope you like the photos and post! Until next time, Pura Vida!

-Brendan “Avila” Mahoney

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