One giant beach

We stuffed Juliet full with drugs for her stomach bug so that she could go on the 20 hour bus to Windhoek, she was fine for the most part. Crossing the Zambian border to Namibia was a lengthy process with our bus; it involved all the bags being hauled off the bus and “randomly” searched. Of course our shared bag was chosen, and I had to empty it in front of the officers and everyone on the bus. While rummaging through our shared bag the officer looked like he’d found something juicy and motioned to the others. I was standing with the bag on my own when he held up a handful of woman’s underwear and stared at me, to the laughter of everyone on the bus including Juliet who was nearby but didn’t accept ownership. Luckily he didn’t find Juliet’s as well.

The bus ride felt like we were in Sunday School class trying to convert us to Christianity. The bus started off with a prayer, which of course is nice. Next was a word from a Namibian Pastor and farmer talking to us about the Good Shepherd followed by some Gospel music videos. When those were finally over we were into the movies, we had three movies in a row with heavily religious undertones. Basically the plot was everybody’s life was crap, until they let Jesus into their hearts, then things got great for them. Jesus really hooked everybody up.

Driving in Namibia through the Caprivi Strip we didn’t notice much difference in the landscape, and this is probably because of the odd geography of this northern part of Namibia that stretches phallic-like into the neighbouring territories.

We woke up to sunrise in the Namibian desert, well, in all honesty we were woken many times throughout the night, but the final time was for the sunrise. The landscape was very dry and sandy, with quite a few bushels scattered amongst it. All I’d really known before travelling to Namibia was it was famous for wind and sand; so far it was meeting my expectations.

Arriving in Windhoek we were pleasantly surprised with the city. It was super clean and very modern. We spent the day walking the streets, hung out at the mall, and ate at some fancy cafes; it was definitely a change from the Africa we’d been experiencing. Windhoek has a population of just over 300,000 and the total population of Namibia is 2.2 million so it’s weird for us to go to such a massive country with a smaller population than New Zealand. We went out for dinner with a couple of British girls we’d met at our guest house, I ordered an Oryx (large wild antelope) Schnitzel which was the best meal I’d had on the trip so far. I remember Karl Pilkington on An Idiot Abroad saying that he didn’t want to try frog in China, not because he was worried it’d taste bad, but because he was worried he’d get a taste for it and not be able to find it back home. I am now in that predicament.

We met an awesome couple from America, Richard and Sarah who offered to take us to Swakopmund with them in their car so we were all off on a road trip. Swakopmund is on the coast, and driving there as you move away from Windhoek the land gets less and less trees, and more and more sand. When you finally reach Swakopmund on the coast, it is a picturesque little German settlement on the beach. I’ve never been to Germany, but I imagine it would be like Germany if they had beaches. We went out for dinner once we got there and my Oryx dinner was eclipsed by Springbok (small wild antelope) Schnitzel. It was out of this world, adding to my despair.

Hohenzollern Building, Swakopmund

The Lighthouse, Swakopmund

Sunset on the Atlantic Ocean, Swakopmund

This tasty morsel; Springbok Schnitzel with bratkartoffeln

We went out sand-boarding the following day on the sand dunes. We drove for about 30 minutes out of town, and into the desert. You don’t need to go far and you are completely surrounded by sand. Once we’d got our boots and board we then had to climb to the summit of the dunes. I’m happy we didn’t climb Mt Kilimanjaro, because we really struggled, so much so that I considered just sitting at the bottom building sandcastles. If you were a sandcastle enthusiast you’d bloody love Namibia aye. We really had a baptism of fire when it came to sand boarding, neither of us had done any snowboarding, so we kind of got thrown off the dune. After a couple of runs we were ready to do the jump of course. They helped us line the jump up, but it was all us when we hit the jump. I felt my jump was graceful; Juliet did a backhand grab going off the jump, which was just showing off. Next was the sand sledding, the speed you pick up on those waxed up boards is hard to capture in a photo, but they had a speed gun on us and I hit 72km/h, luckily sand is soft because I used my face to slow down. We were ready for the beer at the bottom of the dunes, I had sand in places I didn’t even know existed, and when we got back to Swakopmund we were all straight in the surf.

Juliet, Sarah, Richard & I about to carve up the dunes

The huge hike up the dunes

Some pro pulling some mean air on a jump

That same pro resting in the sand (definitely didn't bail off the jump)

The dunes

Juliet's backhand grab 

Juliet carving up the dunes 

Sandboarding

The following day we decided to check out Walvis Bay which is about 40km south of Swakopmund. Reading the Lonely Planet it mentioned that it was a place famous for flamingos, and the team agreed to help me on my quest to get that perfect shot. We tried multiple spots but the flamingos are easily spooked, and I couldn’t get close to them. I even tried wading out into the lagoon and acting nonchalant but two things were working against me; one, we were two massive humans splashing about, and two, the deeper I got the less shorts you could see. We thought we got as good as we could get, and I was resigned to the fact that the reason they put flamingos on shorts was because you can never get close enough to see them. We were walking to a yacht club, nek minnut, we were confronted with about 40 of them on the beach, but as I got closer they started to shuffle away, so I had to chase them, but ended up scaring them away. I however had sneakily scared them onto the rocks, there was my moment, as I edged closer and closer I got the “shot”.

Me chasing after the flamingos in search of that photo

Them all buggering off on me

I got my shot; if you want to see the post and hashtags on Instagram my handle is nick_doni

All you can eat buffet at Walvis Bay; I waddled away from this meal

A sign in case there was any confusion as to what surrounded you at Walvis Bay

Our last beers together on the pier at Swakopmund

We had to say goodbye to Richard and Sarah as they were heading up north and we were heading down south to Sossusvlei to the biggest sand dunes in the world.