Day Eight - Swakopmund
Swakopmund,
Namibia
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Our pickup for the dolphin ride is at 9:15 today so we don't get much of a lie in this morning. Yesterday we stopped at a supermarket to buy some breakfast knowing that we had to fend for ourselves today. My breakfast consists of half a packet of chocolcate chip cookies and an apple (nice and nutritious!). Yum!
We get picked up along with a family of four and we're driven to Walvis Bay where we board the boat. Almost as soon as we get on, a seal jumps up on board and starts flopping around on the seats! Apparently about eight seals have been trained up to board the boats in exchange for fish and this one is called Google. It's quite bizarre as the seal is just like another passenger lounging on the seats, and it often pushes us out of the way if we're in a seat which it wants to go in. We're soon joined by another seal, callled Fluffy, who is a huge male and is obviously not happy to see Google already there eating the fish. Little bit of a scary moment when they face off to each other, but Google quickly acquiesces and moves to the front of the boat while Fluffy gets all the atttention at the back of the boat. One we lose the two seals (they are quick to move to another boat when they felt we weren't giving them sufficient attention) we head out to try and see some dolphins and sure enough we see some bottlenose dolhins swimming near to the boat. They only surface for a matter of seconds so it's quite difficiult to spot them at times. After about 10 minutes, we head out further to sea and we spot some hard-sided dolphins, which are much smaller and darker than the bottlenose dolphins to even harder to spot! It;s an amazing sight when we do glimpse them though and they swim very close to the boat at times (apparently the vibrations of the boat make them sexually aroused, so they often come right up to the boat!).
At the end of the boat trip, we are taken out to a seal colony which is unbelievable - there are so many seals! And the noise they make is bizarre, part human shouting noises, part sheep??!! The smell is pretty gross at times. We also see some oyster farms and we're given the opportunty to eat some oysters which I decide against but the others give it a go, along with a glass of champagne. It's all very civilised :)
Once we're back on dry land, we head back to the bungalows and all take a nap before our quadbiking session in the sand dunes. We're so tired from the night before that I think we all immediately fall asleep and we're out for the 45 minutes that we have spare. Our pickup arrives at 2:30 and we drive the 5 minutes to the quadbiking centre. I'm really scared at this point, and have visions of me ending up underneath a quadbike. Luckily all the other girls are nervous too - none of us have done it before. The boys however, are raring to go and can't wait to get 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 with the other girls and a random guy in a very colourful shellsuit (he was single handedly trying to bring back the 80s I think!) and the boys go off in the fast group. We set off around the dunes, and while it's kinda fun, I'm really nervous at the same time and quite tense trying to hang on and control the bike. When we stop again for a photo stop after about 20 minutes, the guide offers me a place on his bike so I take him up on his offer and hang on to the back of him while the other girls follow. It's so much better!! I no longer have to worry about dying and can take photos too - perfect!!! I can also enjoy the fabulous scenery without having to think about throttles and brakes and eveything else.
We're out on the quadbikes for about two hours and by the end, the sun is setting over the dunes. On our ride back, the guide points out some good resstauarnts in town. Although we are disgusting filthy, we decide we don't have time to all shower (especially as we want to hit the internet cafe again - our last chance for over a week!) so we just change our clothes, wipe our faces and head out. Luca and Kieran aren't joining us tonigtht, so we meet the rest of the group outside one of the restuarunts which our quadbiking guide suggested, but unfortunatley there was a private function so we headed to his other suggestion - the Lighthouse. It was quite a cool place, we sat outside on a couple of big picnic benches but the food wasn't as good as last night. As we're all still knackered from last night, we decide to avoid the local bars and head straight home. I seem to have developed a massive bruise on my back from sitting on the guide's bike (yay, first trip injury!) and it's a litle uncomfortable :(
We also learned tonight that Julie snores like a jet plane. Last night we must have been so tired we slept through it, but tonight it was truly unbelievable.
