WEATHER: Foggy and a cool 21C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: The aerobatic flight over the Namibian Desert
BUMMER OF THE DAY: I’d have to blame the weather today as a bummer
BUYS OF THE DAY: The aerobatic flight for 270AUD
WORD OF THE DAY: We feel the need for speed
CAMP SITE RANKING: Same as last night - 5 out of 5 stars
It was kinda nice that I didn’t have to get up early this morning for anything. Not to say that I dint get up early, as the internal alarm clock can be a pain when it wants to be. Some of the guys were going sand boarding this morning and getting collected at 9.30am. So they were up and out for breakfast before I got out of bed. I just know me and sand boarding would fit together. Climbing sand dunes, to slide down them again and again – yeah, I think this is when the age difference shows, I think I am too old for that stuff now. Anyways I have done it before at Tangalooma resort, which is probably peanuts compared to where our guys were going, but I have done it in my defence.
Manu and I got ready and popped our laundry in just up the road for 11AUD and it was going to be ready at 6pm. They were only charging 3AUD a kilo, so I think that is pretty reasonable. I pretty much had 90% of my backpack in there, so I wasn’t complaining.
We then walked to Far Out (the Adventure place) and asked where a good bakery was, so we went and had an awesome cooked brekkie (well I did Manu had muesli) and then we had till 2pm free time till our collection from A-Frames for out acrobatic flight. We walked to the other side of town to the post office, where I finally managed to send some postcards to the god-daughters. I had one dated the 31st July. I have been carrying that sucker around for like 5 weeks. So I got 4 finally posted to them, I have been so slack in Africa with postcards, but I will get back on it now and get regular cards back in the post. I’m also now adding Sean and Lisa to the postcard list, so I will start to send them regular ones as well once they are home. I love receiving snail mail and I hope that they will as well.
We made a quick detour to the lighthouse via the tourist markets, and to be honest there was nothing there that we hadn’t seen in literally all the other African counties to date. They must have a massive factory somewhere making all the souvenirs and then they just farm them out to the neighboring countries. Seriously I saw some bowls I bought in Kenya in the market, bangles I bought in Tanzania and a statue I bought in Zimbabwe was all there. Manu and I saw some small wooden Helmut Guneia Fowls which has become our animal of choice in the ‘imitating noise’ department. This all stated in Etosha when we started waving at the giraffes, the gunei fowls looked so cute running on their short little legs that we made up this noise for them and it goes like this ahem….ble, ble, ble, ble,ble,ble,ble, and for you to re-create this noise back home it literally just poking out your tongue and running from left to right over your lips really fast. See you can do it and that is our noise for a Helmut guneie fowl. It is funny and we just rip out that noise at the most random time and it just makes us all laugh. Anyway, we were going to buy a HGF each, but the dude wouldn’t move off his price, so we walked on hoping to see them further on, but damn it he was the only one that had them. We’re going to have to lose face and go back – I hate that when that happens and you look like an idiot, and he must have known he was the only one that had them! Bugger.
Manu had some other stuff she wanted to do, so I decided to head back to camp, before getting ready for our acrobatic flight. I happened by our chance to stumble across a Marie Clair clothes shop and I was able to spend 40 minutes and purchase a new skirt and a new pair of cargo pants. It was an awesome find, and I could have easily bought a whole new wardrobe in there, but it would have been totally inappropriate for camping, they had some nice stuff, but I was really in desperate need of new bottoms, so it was pretty cool I was able to find that in Swakopmund. I also stopped at Pick ‘n’Pay for some water supplies and some lunch. They had background music playing in the supermarket and you would never guess which came on. John Farnham, You’re the Voice. How random is that to be in Namibia and hear that in a local supermarket!! I have decided to not eat till after my acrobatic flight as I would hate to be in a mid-barrel roll and I lose my lunch up there. The water I have been happy to drink the truck’s treated water, but the last week, it has tasted salinated and really salty, so I’m going to buy water for the next few days just to get some normal water taste back again.
So by the time I got back to the accommodation Manu wasn’t that far behind me after all that. We only had an hour to kill, so I blogged for that time, the sand boarders returned and had an awesome time from the sound of it all. I think their activity was the best value for money, they got the sand boarding, lunch, a free DVD of their morning all included for 35USD. Pretty sweet deal. Sean had the fastest downhill time on the board at 76km and Lisa didn’t do too badly at 74km. Even though you are in sand, you wouldn’t want to come off that board at that speed, you could do some serious damage, but they all return safely back to us – thank goodness.
So this afternoon we have an acrobatic flight in an ex Chinese Military fighter plane. There are 4 of us doing this, Sean, Manu, David and myself. I know what it is and what to expect, but not knowing how it will feel and how my body will re-act is a little nerving. Our pilot Jock picked us up at 2pm and we drove the 15 minutes to the airport where his office, plane and the Swakopmund Flying School were all located. It is a pretty small airport which just has all small aircraft and helicopters operating out of it. So we stepped into the briefing room and Jock went through what we were to expect today. He showed us a model of the plane we would be in, which he then used that to show us the rolls and loops that we would be performing. To see him do that with the model plane, showing us exactly what we would be doing was eye opening, jaw dropping and exciting to say the least and the first words that came out of my mouth were ‘that’s so cool’ as I looked to Sean and his eyes were dancing like you would expect an adrenalin junkie’s eyes to be doing, his smile was from ear to ear!! He also explained that we would be experiencing 3-4G’s in the moves and that we wouldn’t be doing any negative G’s as they aren’t a nice feeling. At this point I asked about getting sick up there and he said it’s only ever happened twice and they were hung-over from the night before (do-do’s) so the likelihood of that happening was slim, but I still hope it doesn’t happen to me!!! We were getting super excited by now, with the brief over, Jock asked us who wanted to go first to which only Sean and I put out hands up, and being the gentleman that he is, I got the first run. OMG – I’m about to sit in a plane that is going to go upside down with me in it doing barrel rolls, aerial rolls, loops, a stall turn, a Cuban 8 and half rolls and some thrown into combinations as well. The good thing is that no flying suits were required for this, we could wear our normal clothes and our flip flops for shoes. This is Africa baby – anything goes here. We were allowed to take our own cameras up and Jock records the whole thing on video for you, which you just get the raw footage and then you can do whatever you want with it and this was included on the price, which was a nice surprise. Thinking back now there was no talk of exit strategies, parachutes or emergency procedures. He was either very confident that nothing would go wrong or if something did go wrong, we were screwed anyway and no emergency procedure was going to save us, so why bother? Either way, after signing the waiver form, which also stated that the aircraft may not meet Namibian Aircraft safety specs and then we were on our way.
The plane looked AWESOME! Like a, well an old military plane, which I guess it was. It was easy enough to get onto the plane’s wing. There was a small ladder and a hand hold to get up. The cockpit was 2 single seats behind each other. Jock goes the front, he is the pilot after all, and I got the back seat. You had to stand on the seat to get in and straddle the control stick which Jock had control of in the front, but it also moved in the back as well. I was given my headset and shown what button I had to push if I wanted to talk to Jock in the front. It was actually on the throttle, so I hope I don’t press the button too hard and I move the throttle by accident!!! He showed me the instruments on the dash, the original descriptions were in Chinese and relabeled in English and he pointed out the speedo, to which we would be going between 150-350km and the altitude thingy, to which we would be sitting around 1000m out over the Namibian Desert. Next he had to show us how the ancient seat belt worked which was a lap belt as well as a harness belt, which we had to do up ourselves, and tighten, as we didn’t want to be falling out when we had upside down hang time. Next was where the spew bag, should the need arise, god forbid, we had 3 switches that we had to flick when given the nod on the right hand side and last but not least how to close the canopy when we got to the run way. Headset – check, seatbelt – check, waiver form signed – check, no escape plan – check – okay we are ready for takeoff!!!
So after a farewell wave to the guys we rolled to the sand airstrip, where we had to wait for clearance, the engine to warm up, the final checks and then the closing of the canopy. We didn’t have to close it all the way, there were 2 catches, so I left mine on the first catch, which would let in fresh air while I was up there and a gap of about 30cm, if I wanted to get some photos not taken through the glass. I wasn’t sure if this optimistic of me being able to even take photos during the flight, but positive attitude as Jimbob would say if he was here.
As we motored down the strip it was till hard to think that the next 20 minutes were going to be spent flying through the sky, looping, barreling and upside down. The sign at the front of the office said ‘when was the last time you did something for the first time’ – yeah well I am doing today in an acrobatic plane. The scenery of the desert as we rose to our altitude was amazing, we were also getting a scenic flight included for the cost as well, still making this experience more value for money as the day wore on. After about 8 minutes in, and still climbing, Jock gave me the control of the stick and we got to fly the plane for around 6 minutes. We were allowed to turn left or right and just once I had to be reminded to lift the nose a little as we still climbed. I FLEW a plane! It was amazing up there, and Jock took back the controls when we got to 1000m and then we prepared for the first maneuver. If anything I just had apprehension as I didn’t know what to expect, and it is very difficult to put into words, but the only think that was coming out of my mouth was the word awesome – poor Jock, over the 25 minutes probably heard that world like a bazillion times. There was no other word I could use, oh I said cool like a zillion times to let him know I was okay back there. After each move, he would check you were okay, he would explain the next done, ask if you were ready and away you go again. I was able to get some awesome photos mid loop and mid barrel, even with the 4 G’s pressing on us, I could keep the camera quite steady. It was a surreal experience when you were upside down, looking at the world through the glass canopy, going against all common judgment and anything else you had experienced before, and as you exit the move to roll your head back and see the desert right itself again was AWESOME.
As we headed back to the airport, he checked again if you were okay and if you wanted to fly straight back, to throw in some more rolls and barrel, well I’m here now let’s loop our way back – why not. At this point I am glad that I hadn’t eaten lunch, I wasn’t going to be sick, and I just felt a little off. But toughen up, I was only going to do this once right. We did 2 loops over the runway, sort of like a flyby past the flying school, a fly over the township, a low flyby over some massive water tanks and desert and then finally in for the landing. It was only 25 minutes, but I felt I had been up there for way longer than that and it was an AMAZING experience. I SURVIVED – no offense Jock – but I SURVIVED.
We taxied in and parked right next to the office, with my homey are waiting for me and had a smile from ear to ear. I didn’t want to say too much, as I didn’t want to ruin it for the others, but I had to say AWESOME and AWESOME and AWESOME, before Sean was next and in the co-pilot seat and up and away. So over the next 90 minutes I saw my friends go up and have the ride of their lives, while I finally ate my lunch and drank a cold beer in between videoing the flyby loops and when Sean landed, what could be said better than a hug again, we did it and we SURVIVED. No offense again Jock. I do need to point out, that after I had landed the guys asked if I saw the helicopter on the second flyby loop. N I said no what helicopter? And they went onto explain that pretty much as we were coming in for the loop, a helicopter was starting to take off at the same time, and apparently we just avoided a near collision. We firstly I am glad I didn’t see the helicopter and thank-god I SURVIVED! Even the guy at the bar said to the crew that that was a close shave!
Back to camp for showers and then we walked into town for dinner. Nothing had been arranged tonight, so we were left to our own devices. We were going to go back to the same restaurant from last night, but it was closed so we found this pub that had a massive restaurant upstairs and I got a pork knuckle and I have to say it is right up there with one of the best meals I have had on my trip to date. The last pork knuckle I had was in a beer garden in Vienna and this was the same if not better than that one – it was so good and after sharing it with Sean and Lisa there was still enough meat on the plate to feed some-one else. Needless to say there was no crackling left, that got eaten no problems.
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