After leaving the rest stop in the middle of Namibia, we drove 3 hours north toward Sossusvlei. I am going to offer the details of this event in bullet point fashion:
• On the way in the car, we took a bathroom break on the side of the road. At that moment, we saw some ostriches running ahead of us, so of course Dexter decided to get out of the car and chase after them. As he sprinted towards the enormously disabled birds, I guess it provoked one ostrich to run way too fast, as it took a sudden right turn right into a fence and collapsed to the ground. Is it bad of me too laugh? The bird was fine and continued frolicking after its herd of friends. Later, we were told that ostriches can be vicious sometimes and can karate kick a person in the face, and rip their face open with a very sharp nail nail/claw on their middle finger. They may be the only animal that can say “Screw You” and rip your face apart at the same time…awesome. We also drove past the Tropic of Capricorn, so we obviously had to take a sweet photo with it. After we took the photo, Brandt wanted to go to the other side of the road to take a photograph with the Tropic of Cancer sign...btw, Brandt is a geography major...uh oh!
• When people think about the dessert with massive dunes and sand, they are picturing Sossuvlei. There is nothing around except for massive red sand dunes. Quite an amazing spectacle at first sight. One of the biggest dunes in Sossusvlei is called Dune 45…I guess they number all of the dunes (kinda stupid). Anyway, of course we all had to run all the way to the top of it! The only reason I wanted to get to the top of the largest dune is because I wanted to pee with the most EPOCH view ever. I don’t remember if I’ve talked about this in my blog yet, but I’ve made an effort to have the most picturesque and EPOCH pee / viewing spots in all of Africa. I don’t know why I have the urge to pee at the most beautiful spots that I’ve been, maybe it is my form of claiming the area in my mind and saying to myself “AH HA!!! THIS IS MINE!”
At least just for this 30 seconds while I’m marking my territory. Anyway, after peeing at the top, we decided to run as fast as we could down the steep Dune 45. My legs were moving so fast that I felt like the Roadrunner as I proceeded to tumble and run uncontrollably down the face of the dune to the bottom.
• From Dune 45, we cruised over to this area called Deadvlei (which means “dead marsh). Basically, it is this sandstone terrace where these 900 year old dead trees are just chillin in the middle of the driest and hottest dessert in the world. Weirdest sight I’ve ever experienced. Made for some pretty fun and cool photos.
For one of the photos, I decided to hang on one of the dead trees, and I ended up getting about 36 splinters in my hand. The splinters were in my hand for about 4 weeks. OW!
• From Sossusvlei, we trekked to Swakopmund. Swakopumund is the actually the WEIRDEST, but incredibly beautiful, little German town on the western coast of Namibia. It is situated right on the Atlantic ocean and right next to a massive white sand dune dessert. The Atlantic literally transitions right into these huge white sand dunes. We had an EPOCH day and a half in Swakop.
The first morning we were there, some of us decided to go Sand Dune Boarding. These Rasta guys picked us up in their version of a mini bus, and took us to the dunes. They strapped us to some snow/sandboards and let us cruise down the sand mountains. After falling once or twice, I ended up getting the hang of it.
Definitely a once in a life time experience. Our main Rasta instructor kept telling us that we could ask him ANY question we wanted. After he mentioned this a couple of times he looked at us and said, “I just want to let you know, that I know you are STUDENTS, and you must have a lot of “Questions” about Swakopmund. ANY question that you may have, I will answer, or at least tell you where you can find the answer to your question.” I will let your imaginations run wild with what he was hinting at, but we did not ask these type of questions of him.
• After sand boarding, we all walked down to the small boardwalk area where there was a nice beach and grassy park that overlooked the Atlantic ocean. It was one of the most incredible areas I have been to. There were so many German tourists around us, wearing their German leather safari hats, with leather dessert cruiser boots, and calf-high white tube socks. Quite a spectacular sight...
While we were all chilling on the grass just chatting, this extremely old, somewhat crazy, beggar decided he wanted to sit down with us. He introduced himself as ABC. So we called him ABC. At the time we were fine with letting him sit next to us, but once in a while during our conversations, he would blurt out something crazy and angry at us in some type of Namibian language and stare at us blankly…we would look around to one another to try and interpret what he was saying, but we’d all be like “Okay ABC…Thank you for your thoughts.” After a while though, he was definitely getting a little sketchy so Rodrigo (being the manly man that he is) stood up and yelled politely “CAN YOU PLEASE LEAVE US ALONE.” I’ll always remember you ABC.
• We stayed in that area until after sunset…check out this photo of the most colorful and fantastic sunset ever!
• That night, we decided to cruise around the town just to see what it had to offer. It was weirdly quiet. We walked by these restaurants relatively quietly, and all of a sudden all of these "unique" looking German people would stare at us as if we were rioting. Kinda creepy, but we continued on.
The town was big, but everything in it was closed. As we ventured along this path lined by palm trees, we saw this huge tennis court development with bright lights. In the sporting arena, all of these kids ranging from ages 8-18, were playing tennis, kickball, or lying on padded cushions watching movies, or playing ping pong…with no adult supervision (this was at like 11 pm.
We were situated behind a wall and could only peer over it to see the event. We were able to summon a 17 year old boy to us (we prolly looked a little sketchy)…we asked him what he was doing there…his response what epic… "I don’t really know. I’m just messing around with a tennis racket and a ball. It’s some girls birthday, but I don’t know who she is. It’s also supposed to be a fundraiser for something, but nobody brought any money. Do you guys want to skateboard with me?” HAHA! WOW. Interpret this event and imagine it in your head. They must have been brainwashed by the troll looking Swakop citizens. As we continued on our walk, we finally picked a final destination in this bar called Rafters Action Pub. There was barely anyone in the bar (maybe about 15 people), but it had a cool dance floor with surrounding mirrors and lots of colored strobe lights and a stripper pole…what could be better.
• The next day, we went to Windhoek, which is the capital of Namibia. There is nothing to do there, and it was an awful experience, so I will not go into that at all. So we trekked home 16 hours back in one day back to Cape Town. Btw, I was extremely sick for the next week with an ear infection and throat infection. Not fun, but I guess it was worth the ridiculousness of the Namibian Road trip.
More stories about my April extravaganzas to come! Very Very Very Soon.
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