Africa: Sand and wind and FUN!!!!!

Hello Hello!!!
I am currently in Africa!!!!! It’s amazing! I still can’t believe I’m here. We got into Walvis Bay, Namibia Friday morning. When we arrived it was very foggy so we couldn’t even see Africa, just the water around our ship. It’s also a LOT colder than I ever imagined Africa to be! It feels about like fall weather in Colorado. The temperature has been upper 60s I think, but at night it gets very cold and windy. Today is another foggy, cold day. Friday we checked out the town a bit. It’s really cute! It’s small, but very nice. It’s clean and relatively safe, although we were still warned to look out for pickpockets and apparently cell phone theft is pretty common. But everyone here is super friendly and they’re curious about all of us 700 American college students arriving on a huge ship. This is the first time SAS has done a trip to Namibia so it’s new for us and new for Namibians. So we checked out the town, there are a lot of little thrift-store-type places selling about the same things, clothes, shoes, luggage, toys, etc. there are a couple grocery stores similar to ones in the U.S. and there’s a KFC. Haha...on Friday we went to a little sit down burger restaurant, not exactly traditional African food but we were hungry and it was good. The money exchange rate is great for us. 1 USD is about 8 or 9 Namibian dollars and stuff is cheap here.

Yesterday I went on an awesome adventure and it was SUCH a fun day! I did a “sea and sand dunes” trip organized through SAS. First we got on a bus and it took us to a dock and we got on a little boat. This old guy native to Namibia was driving the boat and he had some hilariously bad jokes to tell us the whole time and he was telling us about all the sea creatures we saw and everything else which was really cool! We saw pelicans, seals, and dolphins! The seals were the most fun because they would just jump up onto the boat and hang out and our boat guy could get them to do tricks sometimes. But then they’d just jump back off the boat when they were done. It was so cool! I got some great pictures of the seals. I tried to get pictures of the dolphins but they were tricky because they’d only come out of the water for just a second and they they were back under the water. But it was really cool to see dolphins! We also saw where they were growing or “raising” oysters in the ocean which was really cool! Apparently the water is too cold around Namibia for the oysters to live naturally so they have them in these barrel things and raise them that way and that’s a huge export for Namibia. We also saw a diamond-extracting ship. Pretty awesome! Didn’t actually see any diamonds though, haha.

So then after the boat ride which lasted about 2 hours I think, the boat dropped us off on the beach by the sand dunes where we had a bunch of Land Rovers and drivers/guides waiting for us. There were thousands of seals laying around on the beach too! So we got in the Land Rovers and they drove us along the beach and then went into the sand dunes which was awesome, some of the hills we went down were so steep! Every time, our guide would say “oh here comes another roller coaster!!” and it really was like a roller coaster. Soooo fun! We also stopped and played in some “quick sand” the guides were saying it’s not exactly like the quicksand that can be deadly, but you’ll still sink a little when you walk on it. So we did, and we could sink about up to our waist! Haha. We stopped at another dune and one of the guides had a sandboard with him (well his was just an old snowboard he’d taken the bindings off and put straps on instead for your feet) so people got to try that out which was so cool! I didn’t do it yesterday but some friends and I are hoping to go out today and try it :-) then after a while we stopped for lunch which was so funny because the guides just busted out like tables, chairs, table clothes, dishes, wine in wine glasses, sodas, water, and really good food! They served us oysters first which I tried but didn’t really like a whole lot. It kind of just tasted like ocean haha. But there was bread and different kinds of quiche with fish in them and egg rolls and veggies and all kinds of tasty things to get the taste of ocean out of my mouth haha! So we had a fancy lunch right there in the middle of the desert. And they had little fudge cubes for us for dessert mmmm! Then we went driving around some more and eventually headed up to see Sandwich bay from on top of the sand dunes. It was gorgeous up there, I got some great pictures. It was an all-day trip and by the time I got back I was ready to just pass out and sleep for hours. So I just hung out on the ship and relaxed last night and went to bed early. Today we are hoping to go sandboarding and play around in the dunes but this morning it was foggy and windy and cold, so we’re waiting until after lunch to see if the weather gets better. We are also hoping to go to Swakopmund tomorrow, which is a German town near Walvis Bay with some fun stuff to do there. We’ve heard tell of camel rides available there so I want to try that out! I hear they’re not the nicest animals and not that comfortable to ride but how many times do you get to ride a camel in Africa anyways?! So I hope I can get to do that!!

So pretty much Africa is totally awesome so far and I’m having so much fun! I’m excited for South Africa next week too! If I can find some internet here in Namibia somewhere I’ll post some pictures up on flickr, and if I am not able to do it here I’ll try in South Africa. I want you all to see all the cool stuff I’ve seen so far! I took nearly 200 photos yesterday!

Ok, I hope all is well with everyone. Stay in touch via email!! :-)
*peace*