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  Swakopmund, Namibia
Tuesday, October 7, 2008

We are now writing from Namibia, which is the country directly above South Africa on the west coast. From what we have seen so far it is one huge piece of dry, arid land, beautiful in its remoteness. Most of the roads are gravel and yesterday we drove for 5 hours and saw maybe 6 other vehicles. The landscape is mostly desert with grasses, small shrubs and the occasional tree. Sometimes it felt like we could be driving on the moon.

We managed to get up Table Mountain and visit Robben Island on our last day in Cape Town. The views were spectacular from the mountain and we had a beautiful, sunny day. The Robben Island tour was interesting in the fact that the tour guide had been a prisoner on the island himself with Nelson Mandella. They say they are not bitter about how things were just thankful of the way things turned around after all their struggles - amazing!

We left Cape Town on Monday, the 29th with the van loaded up to the hilt with our gear and supplies and we had just one more stop to make at the mall for some hardware things and a bathing suit for me as I seemed to have left mine hanging up at the cottage back in Quebec! So, I rushed around and managed to find an OK suit, little big but no time to dilly dally and be picky, Doug meanwhile, got the hardware. Rush back to the van only to find out that it would not start. Meanwhile, it's blowing a gale and raining. We sat there for half an hour trying in vain to start the bloody thing. Called the company we bought it from and they sent a mechanic out right away, who then towed it back to his garage. Guess what, we had about 2 hours to kill at the mall waiting with nothing to do!!!! No, I did not bother to search out more (better) bathing suits. Van was returned at 3:00 pm with new wiring and we set off for Clanwilliam arriving in the dark to our first campsite.


The next day we set off for another campsite in the Cedarberg Wilderness Area which is like our provincial parks and after 30 km we turned onto a road with a big closed sign on it. We decided to ignore the sign and follow 6 motorbikers and a pick-up truck to come to the reason why the road was closed - flooded bridge. The river was flowing over the low cement bridge. We all got out and assessed the situation, after much uming and aahing and one guy taking off his shoes and walking across to see how deep it was the motorbikers decided to go for it, followed by the truck. They said they would wait for us incase we got stuck so we went for it too, kids found this very exciting whilst Mum and Dad were gritting our teeth the whole way through. This was all being watched by the local village children. Continued on through spectacular scenery through the mountains, into a lush valley full of citrus farms, saw baboons along the way. Finally made it to the 'provincial' campsite with a sigh of relief only to find out that it was closed due to a storm 2 months earlier that had felled some trees and they were still waiting for a quote to get it cleaned up!!! African time! No problem though as we drove on 7 km to a private campground along the river.


After Cedarberg we continued driving up north across the border into Namibia, no problems crossing. On leaving South Africa a border guard directed us to get our passports checked in office # 1, we then had to take a piece of paper which had been stamped to office # 2. This was stamped again and we were told to go office #3, same thing and onto office #4 for the final stamp, we were then told to return this paper to the original border guard who would then allow us to drive on through to the Namibian border. We handed it to him and he screwed it up into a ball and threw it in the garbage!


Once in Namibia, we visited Fish River Canyon which is the second largest canyon in the world, do not need to tell you which is the biggest, then onto Sessriem and the sand dunes. This area is the oldest, driest ecosystem on earth and it was really hot there. Luckily, the campsite had a pool which we used to keep cool. Next morning we got up at 5:00 am for the sunrise and hiked up Dune 45 and explored around the dunes for about an hour and a half. There were some clouds so the sunrise was not as spectacular as it could have been but the kids had fun rolling around. We then carried on to see more dunes, the last 5 km requires driving through dry sand and you need a 4 x 4 vehicle to do it which we had. Little did we know (until we got stuck) that putting it into 4 wheel drive is very temperamental. Two other vehicles got stuck too trying to help us out. A local guide came to our rescue and drove all vehicles onto harder sand. We decided to turn around and had a tense 2 km drive back to the tar road, praying we would not get stuck again - once was embarrassing enough.


We are now in Swakopmund, the adrenalin capital of Namibia and we went sandboarding this morning - very fun. We did both the stand-up which is like snowboarding and the lie down which is head first on a thin piece of wood - I clocked 69 kmph on the speed gun. Tomorrow we are taking a township tour so that should be interesting.


Now a word from Tara to her gang....




Hey Everyone!!!!!!


Wow I miss you guys this much (at the moment I am spreading my arms as far as they spread)! Anyway I have dreams about my friends about once a week, and once I actually thought I was back in Canmore and I didn't know where I was in the morning. Then I figured out that I was actually in a tent in Namibia.


So during the last entry we were staying at a house in Cape Town. Since then we have driven a big number of kilometers and are in Swakopmund, Namibia. We have been driving a bit each day and camping at random spots. As far as animals go we have seen; baboons, ostriches, zebras, monkeys, springbok (don't you love that name!! oh and springbok are a type of antelope), oryx (type of antelope), lizards, a scorpian, numerous beetles, a snake. I'm still waiting to see giraffes, hippos, rhinos, crocs, and ELEPHANTS!


We stopped in this poor town once and these kids kept coming up to our car and asking for money and candy. I felt really sorry for them. The other day we hiked up this sand dune to see the sunset only to find it was to cloudy to see it. But we weren't about to waste an experience that we had just woken up at 5am for. So we ran down the sand dunes and did some penguin slides.


Today we did the sweetest thing!!!!! We went sand boarding!!!!! We hiked up this huge sand dune and then snowboarded down! Only we were on sand and it didn't hurt when you fall! It was so much fun!!!!! Also we got to toboggan down on these wooden boards. It was supper scary but supper fun!!!!. I went 72 km/h!!!!!! Sam went 69km/h, mom: 69, dad: 60, brett: 62, and Quinn: 50km/h. It was a blast and by the end there wasn't one spot on our bodies that was not covered in sand!


Right now we're staying in these A-frame huts that looks like a piece of cake (it's pink). Tonight we're going to see the video footage of us boarding at a restaurant so that should be fun. I can't wait to show you guys when I get back to Canmore!


Love Tara


PS: It would be really nice if some of Brett's and Quinn's Friends wrote to them. They miss them a lot!!!!!

Post your own travel photos for friends and family Pictures

Quinn getting ready to sandboard	Brett on the lie down board	Scorpian under the van	Our chalet in Swakopmund
Campsite at Sessriem	1-Campsite at Sessriem	In Sessriem Canyon	Sessriem Canyon
Baboon	1-Baboon	Sam found a quiet place to read	Sunset in campground
Sunrise on Dune 45	Sand	Kids being penguins	Watching the sunrise
Kids going on and on	Red Rover stuck in the sand	Digging out the back wheels	Clanwilliam campsite
Looking back	Flooded Bridge	Driving across	Looking Back
Safe on the other side	Campsite on Orange River at border	What happens to cars that break down in Namibia!	Fish River Canyon
1-Fish River Canyon	Canon Roadhouse Campground	Ostriches	Local transportation
Campsite near Sessriem	Rental House/Pool Cape Town	Rental House in Cape Town	Sam & Quinn swimming with local boys
Fish Hoek Beach nr house	View of Cape Town fr. Table Mtn	Looking down from Table Mtn	Ex-political prisoner, Robben Island
Nelson Mandella's Cell

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