Swakopmund
NAMIBIA
A Desert Oasis
By LYNDI
Monday, April 25, 2011
There’s a couple interesting facts about Swakopmund, Namibia. The first is that this area of the country was inhabited by Germans until 1920 and therefore German is more widely spoken than English or Afrikaans (as in the rest of Namibia) and German food and architecture abounds. The second interesting tidbit is that “Swakop” in the local dialect means, ahem, “bunghole” and “mund” in German means “mouth”, making the town the “Bunghole Opening”. However, in practicality, we didn’t find Swakopmund to be either very much like Germany nor like a Bunghole Opening. Which I think is a good thing.
But by far the most exciting thing about this town is that it meant three nights in a hotel!!! Having slept on the floor of a tent for the past 3½ weeks, sometimes without toilets or running water, having a room with a nice, firm bed and attached bathroom was a little slice of heaven. And to our pleasant surprise, the hotel that Tucan picked out was pretty nice – little extras like a television (with 3 channels, but one did play bad ’80s movies non-stop), fan and wi-fi went a long way with our crowd.
When we first pulled in, Tanya took us out to a group dinner at an Italian restaurant called Napolitana. Luckily the company was better than the food – Aaron had a pizza with no tomato sauce (or flavor) and I had a seafood pasta that was pieces of fish with alfredo sauce. Due to our enormous night the night before and our untimely delay enroute to Swakopmund (see Aaron’s Cheetah Park blog), we were all exhausted and were happy to sink into our beds early.
The city also has a widely-known reputation as the Adventure Capital of Namibia where – similar to Livingstone in Zambia – they will gorge you of any and all money that you’d care to spend. Things here were a bit more reasonably priced, though still expensive excursions. However, Swakop is unique in that it is surrounded by the Namib Desert, making sandboarding and quadbiking by far the most popular activities in town.
Most people in our group signed up for the sandboarding adventure where they take you to the top of the dune and then you slide down face first on a big piece of cardboard or standing up on an old snowboard. Because of my time as a tour leader in South America, I was very familiar with sandboarding down Peruvian sand dunes (where they pick you up in a dune buggy and take you to the top of the hill again for about $15) whereas here you had to walk up the dunes yourself and it cost about $60, so I had already decided I would try something different. Plus Aaron likes to get in quadbiking wherever he can, so the decision was easy.
Through a company called “Outback Orange”, we plopped down $80 each for a two-hour tour of Namibia’s sand dunes. Since two other people were a no-show, we had a private guide Tonto (which means “stupid” in Spanish by the way… haha) take us up, down and around the vast sand dunes in the desert.
Aaron got the manual bike, but they put me on an automatic since I think they were afraid I would kill it on the way up a big sand dune and somersault all the way back down. At any rate, Tonto still led us up dunes where my wimpy automatic even got air if I gunned it, and down steep slopes that render your brakes absolutely useless. The best part was that we got to one hill where three other clients were sandboarding, so he let us go up about three times even though they sell a different (and much more expensive) package that includes both. And I can’t lie – after trudging up three steep dunes in the blistering sun, I was happy to get back on my quad bike and cruise through on four wheels.
Less exciting things to do in Swakopmund included the boring necessities like laundry and internet. I also had to buy new shoes (see Cheetah Park blog. Doh.), we went to a movie and ended the night at the casino. We also got one more good group meal at a German restaurant where I had a really nice German meal (a nice change from camp food or bad Italian) and we got to spend one night in with cheese, crackers and wine. All in all a really nice stop in an expensive and touristy town.
The next day we were off to a small town called Sesriem – truly in the middle of nowhere. The name comes from the Afrikaans word for “Six thongs” which is how many leather belts (thongs) the locals had to tie together with a bucket on the end to get water from a well. We pitched our tents and then went for what Tanya called a “20 minute walk” (which I think she meant “20 mile walk”) to the Sesriem Canyon to watch sunset. By the time we got there the sun was nearly down anyways, but the sunset we saw along the valley floor was beautiful as well. Yet another early night because we were getting up at – get ready for it – 4am the next morning!
Just outside of Sesriem is Dune 45 where every tourist between here and Timbuktu goes to watch the sunrise over the vast sand dunes of the Namib Desert. We arrived at Dune 45 when light was just starting to peek over the horizon and it was a slow and steady climb up the spine of the dune. Luckily, there were enough slow people in front of me that slowed down the entire line (going around people was pretty tricky on the steep, sandy slopes) that I could just pretend I was waiting patiently in line and not heaving for oxygen.
Once we were at the top, the tips of the dunes began to turn a deep orange and the desert was slowly enveloped by a blanket of yellow. With our simple little point-and-shoot cameras, we tried to take as many photos we could of the dramatic landscape, but I don’t think we did it justice. I definitely need to steal photos from someone with an expensive and bulky DSLR.
The way back down was, naturally, a lot quicker – which was aided by the fact that Aaron and I just plunged down the side of the dune instead of following the spine. And it’s a good thing the dune wasn’t too much bigger, because once you got started, there was nooooo stopping!
Tanya and our driver Rino had a tasty cooked breakfast waiting for us at the bottom, so we gobbled up fried tomatoes, baked beans, eggs and toast and then set off on another long drive day.
