The Secret Garden Guesthouse Swakopmund

... After the really tasty food and sub-par service, a few of us headed out to probably one of the best bars in this strange town which really isn’t hard to do here. We went right next door and hung out playing pool, talking, and drinking until late at night. Something funny throughout the night, one of the girls liked some guy that we played pool with and we were trying to see if he was gay or not. One of the guys with us was testing him out and at the ...

We arrived in Swakopmund this afternoon after spending the week camping, mostly in the Namibian desert. This is a little seaside town catering to tourists, but there still isn't much open on a Sunday. The town looks cute enough, I guess, but not nearly as quaint and attractive as it was made out to be.

After leaving Cape Town, we drove to the Oliphant (Elephant) River, still in South Africa, and went on a wonderful nature walk for almost 3 hours in the ...

... waiters are in school, and need jobs to pay for it. Wayne was not having this and went on a rant about tipping. Then he told us that we were the rudest people he had ever met, and Sarah huffily replied that he should take a look in the mirror. All in all, it was bad dinner. Sarah went to bed thinking that she didn't know how she would survive another 7 days on the truck. She also dreaded having to be head chef and cooking with him again. That night, she dreamt ...

... I met a guy though that said there was a tour going tomorrow and the owner would do the tour himself since I was really interested in wine and was looking for something more than a drunken booze cruze. After I booked that I met an English guy named Oli and an Italian living in Frace named Fabio (pretty sure he got teased about that). So we went to dinner and I was able to add another meat to the list of game I ate when I ordered Elan (the largest of the antellopes). It ...

... her with. She mostly grinds or boils things and she said she receives 5-6 people per day! She would explain in her click language what it was and then Heini would translate for us as we passed jars around and smelled them. At one point we passed around an anus of some small animal, how strange to put your nose to it and smell it, but we did

Apparently this little adventure took much longer then Heini had expected and so it was dark by the time we ...

... and then the dunes behind that. Frans our Bushman for the day showed us all sorts of things like geckos and how to catch them, tracks of snakes, springbok (lazy as they drag their feet), oryx and beetles. He also told us about the different plants, how the dunes formed and how to get water, stay cool (or warm at night) using the same techniques his people used before being removed from the area. It was a beautiful environment and a good trip but, with ...

... quite warm so a few of us went for a swim in the refreshingly cold river. That night after dinner we sat around the camp fire and drank a few beers and melted some marshmallows. The following day we crossed the border into Namibia, our 14th Country since leaving Ireland last November. The landscape changed almost immediately once we got through border control. Its starting to look a more like the Africa we've seen in films and pictures. There are straight dirt roads as far ...

... because of the legnth of time I have been gone from The States. I haven't been gone long at all. It's just that I feel like I have learned so much here about myself, Africa, The United States, The World at large and I don't know if anyone will understand when I get home. And I don't know how I am going to react to that. I am more scared to go home than I was to come here. I have less than a month left in Namibia. Oh my goodness.
Swakopmund, Namibia jkbenzschawel

... 2 hours driving going as fast as the bikes could go. I literally mine full throttle the whole way. I'd be dangerous on a manual! Riding up the face of dunes and hammering down was excellent fun. The other group did the same just on a steeper scale and went over jumps, something I certainly wasn't experienced to do.

Towards the end we scaled a dune which overlooked the coast and a few shipwrecks. Stunning view but bloody freezing with the seabreeze.

... We were going straight up the side of sand dunes and looping around to go straight back down...its called a roller coaster. The sand doesn't always have the best traction so a lot of times the back wheels would spin out. I scared myself more than a few times. There were also a few huge drops and small jumps. The tour was for 2 hours and ended with a nice photo op of the ocean before we headed back. It was a very cool day!! After everything I decided to eat KFC take-out ...