Swakopmund - zee little germany

Well driving into Swakopmund was a little weird. This town sits on the top of the Namib Desert (think a bloody lot of big sand dunes)....and can only be described as modern! I guess owing its history to colonialism, german style at that, you get modern tourist town of white people appearing in pretty much a dry and desolate african country. I won't get on my high horse about colonialism now - and not just england are to blame to be fair - but in this case you are left with the adrenalin capital of Namibia, and a town that also does great "things from the bakery" (what is the word? shit, I am not qualified to right this blog) as well as coffee!

All manner of activities are on offer in this place - probably the highest profile is the skydiving, cheap by world standards at about 150 US for a jump from 10,000 feet...and before you sigh and think here they go, into a rant about jumping out of a plane - we were too chicken. Well Josie IS scared of heights to be fair - and I figured, I would prefer to pay more and do it a place that actually knows about safety standards. In fact, I was sitting on the fence for two days - but lacked the peer pressure to dare or force me into it.

So we are in a lovely little modern town on the beach, staying in a nice guest house (josie and I paid for the upgrade here - another of our wise purchases).... Dave, another mad fisho - despite the fact he lives in the Gold Coast - and I decided to give the fishing a try. Again, for non-fishing people (you freaks) you might want to skip ahead until you find a suitable paragraph. So we had an early start (by there standards - hah) at 8.15am - made a little more difficult by a headache and squeamy stomach (yes, a hangover) - but we were there ready and willing to catch some big fish.

Apparently, fishing in Swak. is supposed to be pretty good as this big Antartic currents come rushing up full of plankton and all that stuff. Unfortunately we missed the pelagic season by a month (to chase tuna, mackeral etc) and had to settle for Cob fishing - off the bottom. So we motored out, with 2 others from one of the other overland trucks, Rob and some lady (whose name I forgot)...the seas weren't too bad, a big old swell rolling in, but no chop from any wind.

Also in the boat were 3 others, our 2 white guides and a local (required to do all of the work!!) - so 7 all up, which was fairly crowded as the boat was one of those ocean going 21 foot jobbies...
Fishing started pretty well, first half pilchard down on the ladies hook resulted in a fish, that spoiled the party by getting off, right next to the boat. We got a good look at this Cob, something like a cross between a salmon and a jewfish...(told you non-fishers to skip ahead)...and pretty big two at about 2 feet long.

Well to be honest, this fishing was pretty much like reef fishing. Get a bite, haul these things up from the bottom. The only bit making it enjoyable was poor Dave had narry a bite :) This was especially good as we had agreed all the rules for 1st fish, biggest fish, most fish, smallest fish etc - unfortunately for Dave there was no category for no fish ! The battle was between myself and Rob, who stubbornly would not allow me to out catch him by remaining 1 or 2 fish behind. Our staff on the boat were also fishing - at most times it felt like in competition as we got bugger all help from them- and the young fella was fairly handy, if I must say so myself.

Catch and release - is not language they speak in Swakopmund, and every fish went into the esky. Which started to get uncomfortable after 2 hours with 8 big fish between me and Rob. Angry Dave was getting very stabby, and 'the lady' was seasick and throwing up...with our guides having about 5 big ones in the esky ourselves... Surprisingly, well at least to me, I stopped catching fish....Rob surged ahead, and Angry Dave, became Happy Dave when he nabbed his first one (a good candidate for smallest fish). No, of course I didnot remind of that fact every minute, until he caught a keeper...I am not like that !

Well we went back in with a shiteload of fish about lunch time....you should see how they get the boat out of the water over there - I would bore you with the details but only my Dad is probably interested, and I have it on video for him !!

Bugger, this post will be long. In the afternoon we were off Quadbiking in the sanddunes - and pretty much everyone went from the tour. Which was a good thing, as this was one of the highlights of the trip !! Josie and I had to get automatics having no motorbike experience (I declined to mention the Vespa incident), but luckily I nabbed one of the 250 autos, while Josie got stuck with the 125cc... We split into groups, adventurous (meant to go a little bit faster) and the rest, who were told they could divide into 3 groups based on how comfortable they felt at speed.

I will split this next bit up into 'bradleys tale' and 'josies tale' as the two were different and she is chirruping here in my ear while eating banana cake and drinking tea. So firstly, Josie's tale:

Josie's bunch, and there was a big lot of em - never got to split into 3 groups. I suspect the guides were a little lazy - and their lead rider from one of the tour buses was a 65 yr old woman scared of going to quick. Now you can imagine my little Josie, getting stuck in the slow lane and not being able to overtake....at the first rest stop, Josie and Sarah (fast becoming her partner in crime) went up to the guide to 'explain' the situation. He suggested they move to the front if they wanted to go faster - of course, this they did with Josie and Sarah also dragging Dan up to the front...they set off with Josie leading !

Now poor ol' Jose continued to be frustrated, as her quad bike didn't seem to go as fast as the others, a fact Dan kept highlighting by overtaking with a big dumb grin on his face... she later got bogged in the sand, and ended up last in the group - but you know Josie. Once she was back running she just overtook the lot - so many suspicious looks and tutting :)

Bradley's story - now I thought we would get some help in how to drive these things - but this is Africa. Raw and dangerous. But when you are in a group, you feel compelled to keep up - and our guide just went off. These things rocketed along, enough that you could spin your wheels, do donuts etc - but consider we were shooting up sand dunes like massive banked corners and I am talking about 100 feet into the air !! It was brilliant.... Personally I was on the edge most of the time, frequently getting 2 wheels in the air or seeing death reaching eagerly for me at the top of most dunes.

There were some great spills, Benny - who crashed doing donuts while waiting for the others to catch up, ending up with the bike on him and then got a big lecture too boot. Dave with probably the most spectactuar stack right on the top lip of a dune. He had a bruse on his leg about the size of an A4 piece of paper in all the colours. And lastly, some madman who was the driver of one of the other overland trucks....we all thought he worked for them at first -a s he was mad, and kept overtaking etc. Good ol Karma came through, when he hit a tuft of grass and went head first into a dune (he actually couldn't drive for one day and was on painkillers for the next week driving to cape town).

If you ever get the chance anywhere with sand dunes - do the Quadbikes !!

Our last day was a quiet one - apart from enjoying those things they cook in bakeries and nice coffee we went sandboarding. 2 types available - one like snowboarding, and one where you lay down on a bit of ply wood. We chose the later. It was pretty wild. Josie and I were clocked with a speed gun, I hit 72kph - but it took me 3 goes to get past Josie's then record of 71kph. It's pretty quick for face first on a thin bit of wood. The only down side is the slow, hard and hot walk back up the sand dunes in the Desert heat.

Of course, this only provides a good thirst for the evenings!

We got our fish fillets back and cooked dinner for the truck that night. Bit of lemon, some garlic butter and olive oil - with a fresh salad. Nothing beats fresh fish (of course chicken for Josie).

We also grabbed 3 new travellers for our truck - Jonathan, another pom, a bit older with a bit too say on every topic and 2 Japanese girls (no chance of names here - one was nicknamed Thomo and the other one, was too hard). They would laugh, or heeeeeeeee very high pitched at pretty much everything said - as they had trouble understanding us....but they were both very nice and drank and smoked like pirates - fitted in just fine.

And that was Swakopmund.