Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Namibia part II!

Alright, sorry for the radio silence everyone, its been a busy week and a half!

 

Alright so Namibia. Its beautiful, the people are friendly and the US dollar is worth 10 of theirs. Its an amazing place.

The first morning after watching the little girls sing and dance Sean and I took off in search of coke for me and cigarettes (BOOO) for him. The trek out of the port was about a mile and a half and we had no idea where we were going. I guess it was obvious because a worker by they name of Jonas offered to show us out and then gave us a walking tour of the city and took us to the supermarket. We were sure that he was going to ask for money for leading us around (they would have in Morocco and we were still assuming everyone wanted as much money from us as possible) so we ended up tipping him about 5 Namibian dollars. Then a girl with us whips out a box of Oreos and 200 Namibian dollars and shoves them in his hand. He was speechless because looking back at it I don't think he was going to ask for anything. As we're walking away the girl realized she gave him $20 not $2 like she wanted. Hahah bummer.

I got back to the ship, inhaled lunch and made it down in time for my FDP to the Natural and Geological Wonders. This was incredible! We drove around (about 5 per car) up the coast with huge sand dunes to our right and the sea immediately to our left. We then drove inland to a place where after the ice age the earth's crust cracked and lava pushed up and hardened into basalt. The black basalt ridged the brown granite rock of the crust and it looked like there were just dinosaur backs rising up out of everywhere. They called it the "moon scape." The iron content in the rocks was so high that if you hit on basalt rock against another is sounded like metal on metal and the natives call this area the "singing rocks." It was quite the experience. We got back in the car and drove through the moon scape stopping at several different plants. One was called the !nara plant. (the ! in the front represents a click sound which is in use of the native !shosa language) This plant creates an entire ecosystem based on the large, watery fruit it produces. A single fruit when mature can hold over 1 liter of water. The roots of the plant are able to search out water 20-30 meters below the service. There are a male and female plants and they coexist however they grow separate from each other. The other plant we saw was a 600 year old plant called the Welwichia plant. It looks like something out of Jurassic park and the little shop of horrors put together. It was also massive and there are plants that have been found in the Angolan deserts to the north that reach up to 2,000 years old! After these plants we got to try some local food.... oysters. I didn't try them but I can say that I tried the fruit chutney and also the salt and vinegar flavored cheese crackers, the spare ribs flavored potato chips and a citrus granola bar. All... interesting, but not bad. After that we drove around in the moon scape, over a barren land with over I believe 100 type of lichens per sq meter (which makes it the most diverse flora area in Namibia. It even rivals the areas to the north with over a foot of rainfall a year.) The last thing we did was go visit Dune #7, which is the tallest in the area at about 150 meters tall. The sand was so soft! A lot of people went to the top but I stayed relatively close to the bottom due to the fact that my knee was killing me.

After getting back to the ship Vanessa, Alex, Jordan, Megan and a random kid named Charlie all went to a restaurant/bar called The Raft which was in the lagoon and up on stilts. As this was valentines day we couldn't get a table but the bar was fun and we ran into some Norweigan guys and lots of SAS people. It was really fun and we got to shove all 6 of us in a cab.. 5 of us being in the back seat.... good laughs.

The next day I woke up early to be ready to go kayaking by 7 am. I got to watch the sun rise and we drove out (past the largest salt flats in the world) along a very long sand bar to the end where the light house was situated. We got into some kayaks and took off into the water. On our way to the end of the sand bar we passed 2 of the 22 seal colonies that live on the coast of Namibia. We paddled around for about an hour before we saw them. Dolphins. Everyone got so excited that we raced to catch up with them. For about a half an hour we moved with the dolphins and one of them breathed, I kid you not maybe 5 feet from my kayak. I can only describe it as magical. We had some competition from a lot of catamaran boats out dolphin gazing but they also herded them over to our less threatening surface boats. It was very cool to but constantly watching and anticipating where and when the next dolphin would surface. Very cool

I got back to the ship around noon and of course everyone was already out on other trips and doing other things. I ended up disappointing myself by taking a 3 hour nap on the ship while waiting for people to get back. I wasn't comfortable walking out and going into town by myself so I didn't have much of an option. But once everyone else got back we ended up dressing up and going to the pizza/bar that the girlfriend of Vanessa and Alex's tour/guide owned. We met the guide (Herman pronounced "air-mon") and his girlfriend there and had some pizza and drinks with them. Vanessa, Chris and I went back after that and everyone else went out to a dance bar and got back LATE.

The last day Vanessa and I went to Swakopmund and went to a trading market. There we met some native Heraro people who cover themselves with red ocher and butter. They dred their hair in it and cover themselves completely. A couple of guys who were traders themselves helped Vanessa negotiate with them because they didn't speak English and they didn't understand that a $5 US was the same as $50 Namibian dollars. It was really very nice of them and then we ended up talking with them about the US and our government and we made friends with a man named Kevin. I have his phone number :) and Vanessa has a picture wearing his hat. They also said they wanted to trade for stuff from the US since we had no money left. The only thing I had that I was a packet of powdered lemonade which I gave and in return I got a really cool carved nut with an elephant and Rhino on it. It was a cool experience. We left Swakopmund with a cab driver that made us switch cars so that it would make the 30 minute drive to our port and then half way there he had to turn around cause he left his license in the other car. We got back, went to the grocery store and then back on the ship. 

The next day was learning all about South Africa. Namibia was great and I want to go back!!

More on South Africa Later!

Hope you're all well. Lots of love

 

Em  

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