Beautiful Big Sandpit

---

Eating some Damascus nougat in a Swapkopmund, Namibia internet cafe right now. God I love nougat! Namibia is alright too. EXCEPT that it is 50 degrees in the shade and there ain't no shade man! No I was exaggerating it only got up to 46 degrees Celsius which for those slow Americans out there is about 114 degrees F. Bloody hot, but truthfully it is bearable due to the fact that there is absolutely no humidity out there. The night before we came over the border we spent the night at this fantastic camp site called the Fiddlers Creek on the Orange river. I made my first ever illegal border crossing in the evening by swimming over the border and into Namibia, rather exhilarating. Was only shot at twice, lekker. That night we had a massive braai(bbq) and had a few drinks, but really only a few. Anyway, by 2am I was throwing up everywhere. I spent the entire night having to drink water between throwing up so that it would not be as painful, because if I did not I would dry heave. I had the worst food poisoning, the next day when I sat on the toilet I could not tell if I was pissing or pooing. I am better now. yea. Our new friend Tom got the same thing and ended up shitting himself a few times, poor guy. He had five showers that morning. You forget how nice it is to be healthy when you are sick, but somehow we forget so quickly how terrible we felt when we were sick. I suppose this applies to most things we take for granted in life. The next day we went to the Fish River canyon which is the second biggest in the world, it was beautiful but not nearly as breathtaking as I had hoped it would be. Namibia's landscape and sheer beauty has been amazing. It is perhaps the most beautiful scenery that I have ever layed eyes on.
Camping has been fun, and our overland truck of 20 odd people are all awesome. All up for a good time. Speaking of which, I think I might be going skydiving tomorrow. Oh shit! Maybe if I get really drunk tonight I will be too hungover to do it. Now that's a plan. Last night Adam and I were sleeping under a thorn tree in the camp site when a storm blew in, well we thought it was going to be a massive thunder storm but it only blew, nonetheless it was rather exciting packing up and moving to the concrete under the camps bar for the rest of the night. Oh the campsite was in Namibia's smallest municipality, Solitaire, that only has a permanent population of 10. A couple of days ago we climbed dune 45 at 5am and watched the sunrise, so unreal. It was beautiful. Namibia has the worlds oldest and largest sand dunes, some are over 350 meters high. Incredible. After the sunrise we had a two hour tour with this good oke Boesman (who has not worn shoes for the last 22 years) who took us around Sossusvlei and Dead Vlei. It was remarkable. He showed us how spiders and scorpions survive in the 80 degree C sand and this amazing spiders layer in the sand. It's hard to explain but it was amazing. We also saw some wild ostriches, springboks and gemsboks wondering around the desert. The dunes here are so beautiful. So many different shades of red, violet, brown and yellow. And the blue blue sky always tops it off well. Oh we stopped at the Tropic of Capricorn today along the road. Kinda cool!
Spending two days in luxury here in Swakopmund and then heading up north into the Etosha national park that has 168 000 elephant in it. Amazing.
Oh one more thing, they use South African rands and Namibian dollars interchangeably here. So it is really weird paying for things in two different currencies and paying for something and getting two kinds of notes and coins back.
OK time to get drunk so as to avoid jumping out of a plane at 10 000 feet tomorrow!

---

Photos

Sunshine in his eyes
A little Namibian boy in the town of Solitaire.

Good Bye Cape Town!
Our first stop on our tour was for this photo opp of magnificent Cape Town and Table Mountain.

Fish River Canyon
A picture from my hike along the canyon.

Dead Vlei
An 800 year old tree, it looked like another planet.

Sundowner!
Enjoying a Windhoek at sunset on one of the many Dunes around Sessirem.

Tropic of Capricorn
With our tour leader Quinton, good oke.

Red Dunes
Sunrise on Dune 45, the dunes would constantly change colour. Unforgettable.

Breakfast
Breakfast this morning, I just had two cups of Rooibos and some rusks.

Comments

[Matt Lawson]

Namibia
Enjoyed reading you Blog - what travel/tour company did you use in Namibia