[I didn't proof read this entry because I'm tired and it's long. So be on the watch out for typos, I'm sure they're pretty ripe, and it's picking season. Also, if you want a post card from any country, leave your address or e-mail it to me.]
I really had a blast in Namibia. I came into the country knowing really nothing about the place except that it used to be a German colony and all the cities have fairly unpronounceable German names. From our cultural and logistical pre ports we learned that the country is only 18 years old (it can't even drink legally yet), the national language is actually English, though only about 7% speak it, and there is a lot of sand there. It's also the country where Angelina Jolie stayed while preggers and birthed her son Shiloh (which is actually pronounced "she-LOW-hey" in Namibia). And when Wesley Snipes isn't evading taxes, he spends a lot of time in Namibia and is on the e-mail lists of all the locals. But other than that I didn't know what to expect.
The first morning in port, I was woken by "the voice" (the dude who speaks over the ship's loud speaker) who was announcing that contrary to previous belief, the Namibian immigration department was actually going to stamp our passports. Good to know. Once I was awake, I trekked up to the 8th deck observation platform to look around the areas. I get outside and it is freezing and cloudy out. Really? In the background I see sand dunes. In the foreground is a small port city, and a lot of industrial crates- the kinds that big rigs carry around was pretty surreal. "Cold", "fog", and "Africa" are not words I think I've ever placed in the same thought before. I took it all in for the moment, it was all really something I'd never experienced before. I was in Africa.
Around 9ish we get a briefing from a couple of US embassy agents who talk about how things work in Namibia. Apparently Namibia has a pretty high non violent crime rate. One of the embassy agents then tells us a story about the previous night where someone tried to break into the window of his bed and breakfast room with a screw driver and he defended himself with a wicker chair. I wondered if US secret agent training involved a session on screw driver attacks and hotel chair defense instruction.
That first day we headed out to explore the port town of Walvis Bay (sounds more like "VAL-fish"). We went to this place to eat called Spurs which is a Namibian chain that is Native American themed. In Africa. Native American themed. Weird. I passed on the suckling monkey gland sauce burger and got a snail appetizer and a cheeseburger. Then I had to head back to the boat to meet up with my Camping and Stargazing group. He headed about via 4x4 terrain vehicles into the desert to our camping location. Saw some pretty amazing desert mountains and valleys and dunes. Our camping location was tucked away on a dry river bed in a valley. The tents were very nice, and had alarmingly comfortable beds with no scorpions. After putting all of our bags into the tents we started hiking and climbing up the big mountains of the valley at our sides. There were breath taking views from the top, I have some great pictures. Later that night, we had a great dinner and had professional stargazers come show us the constellations and notable celestial bodies. We stayed up late that night talking around the camp fires, taking advantage of the drink service, and then woke up early the next morning to climb a mountain and watch the sunset.
The next day I came back to the boat and headed out to Swakopmund, a more touristy city up the coast 30 minutes. If it weren't for so many Semester at Sea kids walking around, I would have thought that the town was a ghost town. We were literally the only ones on the streets. It was like had came and conquered the city or something. We went to the most amazing restaurant at our hotel, the Europa Hoff. The conversion rate in Namibia is so favorable to the dollar, we were getting about $8 Namibian dollars for every $1 US. So when we went out to dinner, I got surf and turf with game steak, full seared jumbo prawns, and calamari for like $12. The food was gourmet and probably would have cost like $60 in America. Walvis Bay is also famous for its oyster farming; it apparently provides one of the biggest world markets for oysters. So I naturally had to try those too, which were probably among the best oysters I've ever had. In Namibia they actually swish and chew their oysters instead of swallowing them because they are so good. After dinner, my posse headed out to the bars, first this place called Rafters, then The Lodge, both of which were heavily populated with only Semester at Sea students. I felt like if we weren't there the place wouldn't have had any business at all. It was some weird shit. The bars were fun, had a very interesting night, which turned pretty crazy when we got back to the hotel and one of the guys we were with started to act hysterically nuts, scaring the shit out of all the girls. They were not happy that night.
Swakopmund (I've since started calling it Swak town) is actually a sort of famous place. They've filmed a couple Hollywood movies in the area, and they were filming this movie called "The Prisoner" while were there. It also has this huge wood market which is this empty lot filled with tons of people's booths of wood carvings. All the shop owners made the carvings themselves, or with their team, and they all know how to swindle the tourists. They are well rehearsed at sounding disappointed if you don't buy their stuff. You literally cannot walk around this place without being heckled by like 3 shop owners at a time trying to convince you to look at their selection because they'll give you a special Sunday price (just for you, of course). But all the wood work was really sweet. They had humongous carved animals and masks and what not. In order to buy this stuff you have to bargain these guys to at least half the price of what they ask. They expect it. Even then you feel like you've been swindled a little bit. But then you realize that your only dealing with dollars and cents here, $500 Namibian is only $60 American, and if you found any of these carvings in Cost Plus World Market there is no way you'd find any of these things for less than a hundred dollars. And it probably wouldn't be all that authentic. So at the end of the day you don't feel so bad if you blow hundreds of Namibian dollars on some freaking sweet carvings.
The next day was sand boarding on the dunes. Sand boarding is basically snowboarding but on huge desert dunes instead of on snowy slopes. So we hiked up these massive dunes with our rented boards and rode down them. Now I've snowboarded for a good amount of years, so I didn't think I'd really have a problem with sand boarding, but when we get to the top of the dunes and look down the opposite face it turns out that these dunes are equitable to being black diamond runs right off the bat, which is a little gnarly because I didn't go snowboarding last season so I was a little rusty, and because looking down the face of a massive sand dune that looks almost like a vertical drop from the top is just a daunting site. I never fell, but I did take some pretty deep turns on my first couple of runs until I got warmed up. Riding in the sand is similar to riding in fairly deep powder; the board would dig in pretty deep which made carving a little harder than normal. Overall it was very fun, but walking back up the sand dune after each run sucked big time. Words cannot describe how difficult it is to walk up a hundred plus foot sand dune. After sand boarding, our tour guides took us the ocean to watch the sunset and have a small picnic. We start talking to them and it turns out they know more about American pop culture than I do. They're all talking about how they think Britney has been improving lately and that they think it's funny that Lindsay now dates women. I actually got the impression that contemporary culture in Namibia was entirely based on American culture, which is striking because 9 out of 10 people in America probably don't know a single thing about Namibia, let alone that such a place exists in the first place. In Namibia I got culture shock because the culture among the young people that I interacted with was almost the exact same as the young people in America. I didn't experience anything like that in Brazil, and no one had ever talked about that before. So if there is such a thing of getting culture shock because you're not experiencing culture shock, then Namibia was a prime example for me.
For my birthday I got taken out to this place called The Raft. It was a restaurant/bar out on the water held up by stilts. Drinks all around, party hats, and friends. I had amazing food there, I had the famous oyster appetizer and my entrée was some type of game steak topped with melted cheese and stuffed with some shellfish, topped with prawns. From what I remember, it was great. We stayed at the place until 1ish I think before coming home because I had to be up early the next day for my quad biking. Quad biking in the desert was probably the best thing I've done so far. Everybody got to drive their own quad bike and we got so deep into the desert that all you could see around you was sand. It was so desolate and amazing being literally out in the middle of the desert. We were out there for over 2 hours and the first thing I wanted to do when we got back was do it all over again. It is such a great rush dropping down these huge sand dunes on these personal quad bikes. At one point we drove to the top of this dune that overlooked the ocean and we all just paused and admired the scenery for a good five minutes before trekking on again. It's amazing when the desert comes right up to the ocean, it's like the area is one giant beach.
Namibia provided more than I expected, it was truly amazing. There are so many things to do, and everything is so very very cheap. So part planning your family vacations now. I met someone on this ship whose family took her on a family vacation to Sudan for a week. She said it was the best family vacation she ever went on, and that it was way better than going to some tourist spot. That's some food for thought right there.
Next Port is Cape Town, South Africa. Word.
Spenser
