Duenenblick Selfcatering Apartments Swakopmund

... to get stuck in the sand. You had to maintain your speed and know when to turn. We stopped a few times just to enjoy the desert which was really nice. When I was quading, I was paying so much attention to the bike and the rider in front of me; I sometimes forgot to appreciate the beauty of the desert. We stopped at one point overlooking the ocean and the scenery was beautiful. This trip has been interesting ...

... for dinner....mmm more seafood!!!!

Tomorrow a loong loooong drive to Etosha National Park...game drives!!

(no catherine we havent seen any giraffes or elephants yet! hopefully the next few days on our game drives. All we have come aross is Gemsbok, Springbok, ostrich, and tons of baboons)

Anyways..dont knwo when I can post again, and sorry no pics again!!

Ciao,

Aimeee :)

... the drop zone while waiting then returned to town to go quad biking at 2pm. We chose manual bikes while others could have fully automatic or semi auto bikes. The manual ones took some getting used to as the throttle is a hold down button not a wrist twisting handle one. The quad bike is so different from a road bike that getting my head around the idea we were on sand and not going to fall on turns took me awhile to get off my road rider headspace and into the quad bike ...

... with the smoke in their eyes so that if someone saw them tearing up they would explain it was just the smoke. It was taboo to speak of the children again.

So where did the name "bushmen" come from? As we looked around we noticed almost no bushes, instead it was endless red dunes and in a few places scruffy weeds or scraggly trees. Apparently, it was legal to hunt bushmen for sport, and as they were hunted and as ...

... to the next level up with a basic 2 or 2 bedroom house. Unreal as only a few kilometres by the beach are houses shut up as the owners are absent. My final blog will be titled something like - Africa, a Continent of Contrast. Off to quad biking now but the 10 km walk this morning along the coast in the cool sea fog air and houses was a contrast to yesterday's Township Tour seeing how 2/3 of the city 48,000 live and that was done in a hot desert east wind.

... out there. We are given our helmets and bikes and a quick safety briefing before setting off at a leisuirely pace. I manage to stay relatively in control, although there is a couple of scary points where I skid on the loose sand and end up a way outside of the giuide's tracks (we have to stay single file behind the guide and stay within his tracks). After about 15 minutes, they split the group into a fast group and a slow group. Obviously I'm in the slow group along ...

... of other randoms. Slightly nervous on the first run as the dunes are pretty steep but once you're sliding down all is forgotten and you just have a ball. So much fun!!!

Two of the runs have speed cameras. On the first I got up to about 55km an hour and on big daddy, the last one, up to I think 64km/hr. Sarah the fastest in our group at 67km. You fly down!!! The people on standup got to join us for the last run and my goodness you should have seen some of the tumbles. Sand ...

Just a quick update from Swakopmund, the little coastal town Claire and I are going to call home for the next couple of days. We arrived yesterday in the afternoon, knackered after a long northbound trip from Luderitz, the longest, continuous stretch of un-tarred road we have had to negotiate so far. Dust was everywhere when we stopped: in our car, on our bodies, it also found its way inside most of our boxes and bags. But that's ...

... cleaning up back at the hostel we went into town stopping at the market to barter for some memento's. Sarah C restored to telling the Market stall owners that she was a kiwi couldn't take anything back to NZ, she had seen first hand how well this worked for us! That evening we attended a viewing of our sand boarding adventure DVD and photos. The trekking up the dune in the heat (measured at 67 degrees on the sand) and a few beers took it out of us so we had an early night.

... but whatever. Nikki and I made a great team. I steered and she helped paddle in the front. The day was just perfect. We held our own and were firmly in the middle of the group. We had some nice personal chats, we do have a lot in common. We paddled leisurely and saw some locals mostly on the Namibian side of the river, washing their clothes, kids waving, some goats and a few people just hanging around.
We headed off to Fish River Canyon after that. The drive was long and ...