After five hours on the dusty road and one puncture we arrived late friday night in Swakopmund (little Germany). Friday evening was spent in the company of a Springbok, several beer and Jägermeister in a pub in Swakopmund. Despite the fact that I had been told that Swakopmund was just as, if not more German, than Germany itself, I was still surprised to find Scooter posters hanging on the wall, German 80hits coming out from the loudspeakers and all the guest to be white.......... Admittedly I am in a country that I really know nothing about, so I am not sure what to expect but still it would be naive to think my understanding about the world hasn't been shaped by among others the media, so I did not expect to see this. Lesson learnt from this expect everything, don't believe everything you see in the media and keep your mind open.
Saturday we were all 'rudely' awaken at 8:00 by our guide Shaun who apparently had a bit to much energy and thought we all were in need of an early start. Maybe is it just me, but I do find it a bit hard to get up at 8:00 in the morning when I've been out drinking and dancing the night before.
Anyways we all got out of bed and were all surprised to find that Africa is not that warm after all, my knitted sweater was deeply missed throughout the day.
The plan for Saturday was to race through the magnificent sand dunes on quad bikes, sounds great right?!
After a short and fast introduction to the bikes, which best can be compared to buying a chain saw and not reading the user manual before using it, we were given permission to start the quad bikes and were to follow the instructor in one long line. Forgetting that most of us never had tried this before the instructor took us at a very high speed through steep dunes and as you can see from the photo below this resulted in two accidents. One of the German girls I live with was literally thrown off her bike and the guy next to her ended up with the bike in his chin while doing some kind of fancy stunt which resulted in five stitches. Conclusion ALWAYS read the manual. Saturday evening was spent as the previous night in company with a springbok and beers. Btw the national dish seems to be meat with more meat.
Besides quad biking and building castles out of sand, the desert outside Swakopmund had more activities to offer, so Sunday we decided to go sand boarding and yes you guess right it is indeed like snow boarding just done on sand instead of snow. So we packed our gear which included of cause, beer, snow boards, big boots and helmets and we set off to climb the big sand dunes and slide down them. Can not express how surreal it felt to be standing on the top, looking out at the warm, dry sea of sand wearing shorts, a top, massive winter boots and be about to slide down a 84 meter long dune on a greased-op snowboard.
As I have never tried snow boarding I can't really compare the two but can only say it was great fun. Just to make the whole thing more exciting our instructors suggested that we all should try the jump and so we did. First time went well but the second time I landed right on my tail bone, but what the hell accidents happens when you are having fun.
I had overall a great and very different weekend and managed to avoid getting sunburned.
This is day five and the real ‘thing’ is just slowly getting started. Yesterday I started my internship at the NID but as today only was my second day I wouldn't say I have really started yet, so more to come another day.
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