Namibia - Swakopmund

* Grandmothers beware, you may not approve of all activities in this post!

Swakopmund is a small German settlement sitting between the Atlantic Ocean and a longe field of sand dunes that stretches for a few hundred kilometers down the coast called the Namib Desert. The highlights of our stay here have been sandboarding, go-carting, ATVing, skydiving and eating Springbok at a local resaturant.

Springbok: The tastiest steak you'll ever have. (not our photo)

Oh yah, and we also went SKYDIVING!
Here are our skydiving faces:

* This is purely a dramatization. Melissa wanted us to pose for her.

Phil, Stu, and I ended up going skydiving out of Swakopmund the day before we left. We were actually really lucky as all the jumps from previous days had been canceled due to clouds and the ones after us were canceled due to wind. However, our jumps were amazing - hands down, the most exhilarating experience we've ever had. We've already planned our next one!

Skydivemobile. This is the car that drives you into the desert landing strip.

The perfectly good plane that you jump out of.

Me (Phil) floating to th earth after my 30 second freefall.

Graeme falling from a bit higher.

Phil landing.

Stu landing. (Note: Stu is 60. He is a trooper.)

Me after the dive (still wearing the silly suit).

It turns out that there is even more fun to be had in Swakopmund than there is in Livingstone! So, in addition to skydiving, we also went sand boarding, go-carting, and ATVing. Sand boarding had two options: stand up boarding, which was essentially snowboarding on sand, and lie down boarding, where you went head first down a dune while riding on a polished piece of particle board. For the lie down option, Graeme clocked in at 69 km/h and Melissa was a close second at 68 km/h. It was sooooo much fun! Melissa also managed to pull off an awesome tail grab (see photo).

Melissa at the top of the dune.

Neil on the dune.

Melissa nearing 70km/h.

Oh yes!

Oh no :(

The same day that we went sand boarding, we also went ATVing through the huge sand dunes of the Namib. The ride lasted for just over two hours and as we zipped up and down the dunes. We were all really excited for this activity as we had so much fun doing it in Panama. I can happily say that it did not dissapoint. There are more pictures to come, but they are on Stu's camera.


Last of all was go-carting, which we did right after we finished skydiving. Melissa decided to join Phil and I for this one and she beat us considerably. She always beats me at go-carting! The track was just over 500 m long, and the german made carts were amazingly fast. On the stretch you could get up to 70 km/h before hurtling around the first corner. Go-carting only lasted 10 minutes, but it was incredibly fun!