TOWNSHIP TOUR AND QUAD BIKING NAMIBIA STYLE

WEATHER: Cool, foggy and damp

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Listening to Vocal Galore sing for us = AWESOME

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Chickening out of a cliff drop on the quad bikes

BUYS OF THE DAY: CD from Vocal Galore for 15AUD – worth every penny

WORD OF THE DAY: This is how we roll…..

CAMP SITE RANKING: Same as last night - 5 out of 5 stars even if it is a bit damp

Another full day in Swakopmund.  As the town is located beachfront, it is renewed for its foggy weather and we heard it happens approx. 300 days of the year here, the fog rolls in till around lunch time and depending on the weather it normally clears and turns into a nice afternoon.  I looked at housing prices here and you can get a brand new 3 bedroom apartment in the town for 150,000AUD.  The town is pretty, seems lot of renovating is taking place, but walking around it seems like a little bit if a ghost town.  Where is everybody?  But it does have a great feel about it; it’s just the fog business that would put me off living here permanently.   Anyway we have the township tour this morning at 10am.  So we decided as a group to meet at 7.30am to walk into town to ‘our’ German bakery for our ‘usual’ breakfast.  It’s funny it started with just Manu and I, then the next day there were 5 of us and this morning there are 7 of us!  They must love us bringing in all our friends! 

We are having a BBQ tonight at A Frames and as we have such a busy day, we have decided to stop at the supermarket after breakfast to buy the supplies we need.  As there were 7 of us it is funny what people do back home for BBQ’s, and we also had to think on the resources we had available, which was pretty much all Simons cooking gear, but it was not going to be cooking a BBQ the conventional way, so we had to be mindful of this as well for what we wanted to cook and what would actually be achievable.  So in the end, we bought a few salads pre-made, stuff to make a green salad, enough meat for 10 people, baked potato stuff, stuff for Pam to make guacamole, some soft drink, a bottle of wine and a few other things and we only had to chip in $11 each.  Not bad to feed 11 people.  So with BBQ goods in hand, we walked back to A Frames to drop off the stuff and get ready for our morning tour.

As usual with the last 2 days, the pick-up was 10 minutes late.  TIA.  As usual the weather was cool and foggy, but for once our activity wasn’t weather dependent, so it didn’t matter too much to us this morning.  Michael was out guide for the morning, a young 21 year old that was passionate about his town, his people and culture.  He was awesome.  The township we visited was called Mondesa.  It was created in 1954 when the apartheid was passed and the coloured people had to move out of town.  Shanty’s and shack were built for them to live in and the suburb as such still exists today, but there can be white pe9ple now found in Mondesa and they now have power and running water, which they didn’t back when the community was first formed.  Their shops etc. are pretty much just a building and the only thing telling you what it is is the sign out front.  Michael grew up in Mondesa and it was cool to hear some of his stories.  We went to a local market, which was basically ladies selling fresh fish, dried fish and there was a row of what they call kapana.  It is a form of BBQ, but instead of throwing and people eating a whole slab of meat, you buy it by the piece, which are pretty much just small bite sizes of meat per piece.  It’s pretty smart really.  We also got to try what they call ‘fat cakes’ which is pretty much a jam donut without the jam and the sugar and they were delicious, even after seeing them in the deep fryer cooking away.  They also had some ladies selling grains and fresh vegetables and the interesting thing here was the scoops they used for the grains were old oil cans for cars.  I am sure they have been washed properly and a classic example that nothing goes to waste.  We also went to visit a 76 year old lady from one of the tribes that lives in the township and she showed us some local handicraft stuff, nuts and some musical instruments and she reminded me so much of Npondo from our village visit in Mtopo, she always had a smile on her face and always laughing.  Michael was her translator and we listened to her for around 40 minutes and then after another visit to a local house we headed for lunch near where Michael grew up.  We had a serve of some local fare including some chicken, porridge, witchery grubs, bean thing and some spinach thing, and it was all delicious.  There were local kids hanging around the glass sliding door checking us all out.  They were so cute.  Then we got a pleasant surprise, Michael has a singing group formed with friends he went to school with called Vocal Galore (they are on Facebook – look them up) and they sang 4 songs for us and I have to say they gave me goose bumps, they were SURPURB.  There were 6 of them all vocals and one of the guys had a drum, but man they were amazing, I took video of all the songs and then I also bought their CD that they flogged at the end.  What a great way to finish off a tour.  Just amazing.

So after seeing Vocal Galore perform, we had 15 minutes for them to drop us back to A Frames, get some shoes on our feet and some sunscreen on and back out the front for our 2.30pm collection for the quad bikes.  Lucky we are on TIA, as we were 10 minutes late and the transfer wasn’t there yet, so it finally worked in our favor.  There were 7 of us quad biking this afternoon, Sean, Dave, GG, Lisa, Manu, Meyouki and me.  I have quad biked before, once again on Tangalooma, but it was pretty tame, I know this will be a little more exciting after seeing the sand dunes themselves, but how scary can it be if I’ve done it before.  It only took us 3 minutes, if that to get to the quad bike center, we literally could see out accommodation from across the road, we really could have walked, so that was pretty funny, but after signing the waiver, another one and the 3^rd one in 3 days, we were kitted up with our helmets, introduced to our toy of choice and then the safety briefing.  There were 2 groups heading out, the fast group (Sean, Dave and GG) who were on manual bikes and then the slow group (Manu, Lisa, Meyouki, myself and a chick from the quad place) on automatic quads.  Lisa was a bit unsure on which quad to jump on as she has experience riding them but chose to stick with the slow pokes, which turned out to be fast still anyway, except for me coming up the rear the whole day.

So after the briefing, we set off letting the speedy Gonzales’s off first, we then hit the thumb to the handle (not foot to the floor).  I was second after the guide, so straight away I felt the pressure to keep up to start with (which after the halfway mark I swapped to be at the back) and after going through some easy stuff getting used to handling the quads we weren’t out into the desert proper and got to honing around.  I have to say out of the 3 activities I have done on the last 3 days this was the scariest by far.  I am not a fan of the slipping and sliding on gravel / sand, and the sensation when the quad was not on an even keel of the possibility that I could tip over.  Going fast on the flats I was fine and this is where I would make up ground to catch back up with the guys, and you would also need to pick up speed hitting the sand dunes, and if you didn’t have enough gas, then firstly you don’t go as high on the dune (which I was fine with) but then the feeling that you could get stuck up there and then roll down was terrifying to me.  I rekon I was scared for 85% of the 2 hours we were out there and would have been quite happy to have done just an hour out there.  In saying that the desert itself was amazing.  The dunes were awesome, amazing colours and to see the fasties, on some of the other dunes was super cool.  Even though I was scared shitless I ran with the group the whole way, as time ticked on, we hit bigger dunes, which was fine, but some of the down dune riding was steep, but I ran with it all and held on and hoped for the best, but there was a pint where we got to and the guide told us to go slow and we all stopped waiting for our turn to head down a dune.  Well I was behind Meyouki and I was all set to follow till she went over the edge and it looked like she had just fallen straight off, that is how steep this bloody dune was and I just froze.  Everyone else had gone down except me and the random check behind me and I just shook my head and said I couldn’t go down there.  I know I would freak halfway, panic, the quad would stall and I would fall off and die on a sand dune in Namibia.  I wasn’t riding down that cliff face.  So our guide, whether for good measure or trying to show me it was easy, rode UP the cliff face to check on me, and when I said I can’t go down that, he said that’s fine, how about you get on the back of my quad and I’ll take you down, now if that was to ease my panic it didn’t work, the answer was still no.  So after a little think and the random chick also not wanting to attempt the cliff face, he took us on a small 5 minute detour to catch up with the rest of the group that was at the bottom of the dune.  There was just no way I could have done that.  It was terrifying and even now thinking about it I am still glad that I didn’t do it.  The only other scary moment, beside the other 90 minutes, was I didn’t get a big enough run up a massive dune and got stuck right near the top, the random chicky who was also serving as the arse man, didn’t even stop and scooted straight past me, as I was trying to get my quad moving.  First thought was thanks for the help, but I guess if she had of stopped she probably would have got stuck as well and went through to get help, so I’ll let her off this time.  I didn’t actually stop as such, just about, but with some pelvic thrusts, some prayers sent above and a flogging on my accelerator I crept my way up to the top just as my guide was notified by random, and saw I was stuck and motored over.  I have a feeling I may not have been made for quad biking in the Namibian Desert but I gave it a go and I sort of had fun.  I am glad I did it, but I don’t think I will be in a hurry to head back.

We finished off with a magnificent view from a dune right next to the Atlantic Ocean as the sun started to set, and it was magic.  It was nearly worth it just for that, but the main road also ran along the coast and I could have just walked from the accommodation to get the same view, but then I wouldn’t have ridden through the desert.  So in 3 days we have jumped out of plane over the desert, we have flown over the desert upside-down and ridden for 2 hours in the desert.  Pretty cool claim to fame and we SURVIVED it all. 

We got some free time before having to get the BBQ started.  I have to say it is a relief to have all the crazy activities now all done.  Even though I wasn’t worried about any of them, at the end of the day if your time is up it is up, but I think your subconscious doesn’t let you off so easy and it was lie a weight lifted off and that I could now relax.  The BBQ was interesting.  We didn’t realize that we would also be cooking all the meat, we thought Simon was going to help us with it, as our experience with gas cook tops and his equipment was NIL.  But we managed and David was the key element to getting all the meat cooked, where the rest of us prepared the salads.  It was a mad scramble and I am sure we used 3 times the dishes and pots actually required, but when you have 8 people all doing something ‘their’ way it was always going to like that right!  But we go there in the end and it was a great meal and we actually had left overs, which will be used for lunch tomorrow.  The cleanup was just as funny with lack of sinks and bench space we did the best we could and in hindsight we shouldn’t have used the bathroom sink to prewash the 2 fry pans we used.  Whoops sorry A Frames.  It was a quite night all round, after 3 days of full on activities it all finally caught up with me and I was in bed by 10.30pm.  Swakopmund you were awesome, besides some dodgy weather, we had a ball.  I had made my status update on FB that if the place didn’t kill me I would love it here, so this is my call that I actually love Swakopmund, would I live here?  That would take some more consideration, but with the town reliant on mining, Uranium mines to be exact, they currently have 5 uranium mines with 3 more to open next year, it seems viable that it could be a good place to buy.