Zooooooooooom!!

Hello again,

Shall we head back to the narrative, which cut off last time just as we entered Swakopmund, which seemed to be utterly dead...?

The good news here was that we were staying in a hostel again. Beds! No putting up of tents! Yay!!! So, we got everything settled into our rooms, then headed off for the obligatory videos outlining all the activities available to do in Swakop. The main ones of these are Sandboarding, Quad Biking and Skydiving, making good use of the sand dunes just out of town. For me, this was relatively unnecessary, as I already knew I was going to do Quadding and Sandboarding. No contest whatsoever. Various of the others umm-ed and ahh-ed a bit, but it was pretty similar sentiments form most people, although Roger and Chiara (our Canadian couple) decided to do the skydive as well!

Having decided on our activities for the next day, it was off to the bar (or back to the bar in a few cases...) to start our belated celebrations of Valdy's brthday - given that he didn't have to drive the next day, he was good to come out with us and start the mayhem. However, the early action was fairly brief, as we adjourned from the hostel bar to a pub/restaurant called The Lighthouse for another big slap-up meal (mmm, oryx...). Although, given the amount of wine and beer consumed alongside the food, matters were proceeding fairly energetically anyway. Once we finished there, we decided that, given the deader-than-a-morgue state of much of Swakop on a Sunday night in the middle of winter, it was back to the hostel bar again, where Valdy renewed his long-running relationship with shooters, aided and abetted by various of the usual suspects from the truck.

What followed was probably one of the daftest nights on the whole trip, and hence the memories are slightly more fragmented. Highlights included Belinda's seriously energetic dancing up on the tables, Dave's dogged pursuit of the barmaid, several games of pool that went on way too long, largely because I think some of the players could scarcely see the balls, and the classic comedy moment where I found myself chatting to one of the jump-masters for the skydive company, who'd had a few bevvies himself. It was partway through his trying to persuade me to sign up to jump the next day, that he pointed out a guy passed out on the bar. And told me that was the guy who packed the parachutes. What little enthusiasm I had at that point faded away pretty sharpish. By the end of the night, though, I'd apparently dozed off on the bar myself (classy, I know) before staggering back to my bed.

The next day was another bright and cool day, enlivened somewhat by the post-mortems of the previous night over fry-ups. And by Dave's smug appearance that morning in a tasteful T-shirt emblazoned with a variant on a certain Pizza restaurant's logo featuring the words "Pussy Hut". And no, he wasn't referring to a kitten sanctuary. Soon enough, though, it was time to load up into the Kombi vans associated with most good backpacker activity companies and head out to the dunes, ready for sandboarding. For those not familiar with the activity, this involves climbing sand dunes, then going down them either on a waxed-up snowboard, or lying down on some form of toboggan. The first bit (going up) is the painful bit. Really painful. Climbing up a mound of shifting sand whilst dragging a board of some kind is not fun. Not at all. Especially not when recovering from "the night before", as so many of us were doing (I will freely admit to having several thoughts along the line of "I am going to die" in the course of climbing the dunes that morning).

However, the going-down bit is great fun. I had decided, given my brief exposure to snowboards a few years earlier, to give the "stand-up" version of sandboarding a go. And, well, frankly I sucked. The only real benefit of quite how bad I was was that I made a couple of appearances in the video of the day (they always like good crashes...). After a couple of attempts, and a couple of gut-busting climbs back up that evil dune, I happily switched over to tobogganing. Now this was much more fun. Sliding down the slope at up to 80km/h on a sheet of waxed plywood is very addictive. I made one descent down "Lizzy" (the 2nd-fastest route down the dunes, and still a real eye-opener!), and then 2 further ones down "Dizzy", their fastest run, featuring a point where the slope drops away and you can get "air" under at least the front of your sheet. Absolutely superb fun. There's nothing quite like doing near enough 50 miles an hour down a sand-dune on a sheet of plywood, frantically trying to keep elbows and hands (gloved) from digging into the sand and causing a spectacular "wipeout", either screaming like a girl or giggling like a loon. I was still bouncing around a couple of hours later, when it came around to time to go out on the Quads.

Now, to be honest, I love Quad bikes (4WD 4-wheeled motorbikes for those unfamiliar with them). I almost never pass up a chance to have a go on them, and this trip just sounded like it would be amazing, as we would be heading out through the dune fields, before "roller-coaster-ing" up and down the sides of the dunes. And doing so for about 2 hours. I won't bore everyone with all the details, but suffice to say that, at least after I had got clear of some of the more nervous riders near the back of the field and joined up with the over-enthusiastic idiots in the leading group, I was ploughing along at near enough full throttle for most of the rest of the trip. And the "roller-coastering" involves going at full speed, often down a slope, towards one of the dunes, driving as high up the side of it as you can then, just as you are losing traction and slowing right down, turning back down the slope to pick up more speed and (often) do it again over the other side of the dip. There was general agreement from those of us who did it that this was probably the single most fun activity on the whole damned trip, and for most of us that included rafting the Mighty Zambezi (TM).

We got back to Swakop itself after sundown, having caught dusk looking over the South Atlantic, and caught some air over a few of the bumps on the way back. Various of us were obviously disappointed when told that, no, we couldn't go and do it again, and yes, we had to give the quads back now. We then headed back into town to the hostel, and shortly popped over to one of the local pubs, to see the video CD from our sandboarding earlier in the day. I loved this so much that I gave in and bought a copy. I know, I'm weak, but it is quite cool, and I actually quite like the music too! Then it was back to the hostel, where my cooking team were to have our final shift making dinner on the trip, and rarely can there have been an easier one - chicken burgers. Fry chicken breasts, chop salad, get out bread rolls and sauces. Even the washing-up was pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, though, by the time we'd finished cleaning up, everybody's ardour for any further celebrations had dampened somewhat, and it ended up being a very quiet night.

And that will have to do for now. Until the next time, mis amigos, adios!

Pat