Swakopmund

The unique landscape of Spitzkoppe was behind us as we drove to the coast and the Cape Cross Seal Colony. The morning was freezing and we were all rugged up in sleeping bags in the truck. The landscape was pretty boring for this bit and coupled with quite heavy fog, most of us grabbed an extra nap.

At the seal colony the first thing we noticed was the smell - BAD. When there are over 10 000 seals all living in the same place it is really smelly and noisy. We spent around an hour wandering the boardwalks and watching the interactions between the adult and infant seals as well as males fighting each other.

A carpet of seals

At one point there were 5 pairs of bulls fighting on this bit of rock

Leaving Cape Cross we continued down the coast into Swakopmund which was promoted as the Namibian adventure town. There were many activities on offer and between us we chose to do Quadbiking, Sandboarding and Skydiving.

For the 2 nights we were here we were again in a hostel staying in 4bed dorms. Apart from the scheduled adventures that we planned for, one person had a memorable stay. The incident occurred after we'd all headed out for a group dinner in town and then onto a bar for a bit of dancing. In short Claire was feeling a bit crook so we left early taking our room key with us. One of the other people in our room then got separated from the group and made his way back to the hostel on his own. After realising he didn't have a key and the bell not working on the gate he decided to jump the electric fence. Unfortunately he landed badly and broke his ankle.

The rest of the group returned about an hour later and flagged a police car down, only to be told the ambulance was 'in the garage'. Eventually he was taken to a private hospital, only to have the break confirmed, given some painkillers and sent back to the hostel to await a specialist appointment for surgery the next day.

Sadly he wasn't able to continue the tour with us and we had to leave him in the hostel until the doctors gave him clearance to fly back to England. We don't think the hospital often sees an overlanding truck turn up with 20 people outside visiting hours as we said goodbye and dropped off a care package before we kept going. We think it was about another week before he could return home.

Skydiving
Claire has been keeping a secret desire to throw herself out of a plane and after being assured by our tour guides that this company (Groundrush Adventures Swakopmund) was reputable and safe she signed up with 6 other people from the truck. Why chose Africa to jump out of a plane? Well, in Swakopmund you can see the South Atlantic Ocean meet the Nambiban Desert. The jump was scheduled for the afternoon we arrived so they headed out to the airstrip in the desert only to be told when they got there that the winds at jumping altitude were too strong and they would need to return the next day.

That night it rained and I was concerned that the weather was going to prevent my chances of leaping out of the perfectly good plane. Luckily the rain stopped and the clouds cleared enough for us to try again. The only hitch was that one of the camera guys had pulled a neck muscle the day before and was taking a week off for it to heal. Having seen what these guys have on their heads it is no wonder that he got hurt! There was a game of 'rock, paper, scissors' to decide who would get the other camera guy. As we were climbing into the van to drive out, news came through that the owner of the company had just flown back into town from his family holiday and he would step in and be the second camera guy. We picked him up in the main street and drove him home to pick up his kit and then out to the airfield. Happy faces all round!

The airstrip was marked out with a few rocks and a small shed at one end containing the gear. The plane could only hold 6 people in addition to the pilot and was the same size as the van! I was in the second group to jump and literally saw the tandem instructor land, remove the shute, get handed a new one and board the plane. I don't think the plane was even grounded for more then five minutes between jumps.

Yep, the van can hold more people!

About to fly, oh and those rocks are the edge of the run way

It takes 25 minutes for the plane to reach 10 000 feet and I was feeling more then a little nervous. I was the second person to jump and watching Elena jump first was actually calming.

Very cosy in the teeny plane

The camera man crawled out onto the wheels of the plane and then I was told to 'walk' to the door. This is not an easy task when attached to someone else! It is a pretty strange feeling to realise that there is a man on the wheel of a tiny plane, you are strapped to another man who is crouched at the open door of the plane and you are literally hanging in mid air with your legs being pulled sideways as the plane continues to fly. Our exit from the plane wasn't strictly textbook, but we did pull off a pretty good cartwheel/somersault. Rave reviews from the other guides when they saw it.

Elena's camera man climbing onto the wheel

For some reason this photo wouldn't load up the correct way. Cartwheeling out!

The free fall wasn't scary at all. Apart from feeling like you are standing in front of a very large fan and moving your arms becomes difficult you didn't feel like you were falling. I even had time to look around a bit and try and spot the sand dunes where Steve was Quadbiking.

Dreiss is giving the camera man the count down for the shute while I check out the view

I was completely unprepared for the shute to open. When the shute is open you feel like you are floating. It wasn't until this point that the difference in speed is noticed from the free fall. Dreiss gave me control of the shute but my arms were too shaky with adrenaline to be able to do any manuovers. The free fall was apparently about 30secs and 3min or so once the shute was open. Our landing wasn't so graceful as I didn't process the 'straigten your legs' command until after I hit the ground

Coming in to land

Dreiss - my tandem guide.

There aren't enough positive adjectives to describe this experience. All of us wished we could do it again, this time know what to expect and being a bit more relaxed about it. The funniest incident of the day happened to one of the other guys from the truck. Just as he went to jump his shoe fell off and to the surprise of the ground assistants, landed in the middle of the airstrip a few minutes ahead of the owner. He was very relieved as he was due at quadbiking straight after his jump and didn't have time to return to the hostel for new shoes.

The other 3 girls I jumped with

There is a video but it was too big to put here so you will have to visit us to see it.

Sandboarding

Now you might think that Claire having jumped out of a plane would relish the opportunity for a bit of sand dune activity but not so. Most of the truck signed up for these two options but when it rained during the night many of them backed out thinking that the boarding wouldn't be possible on wet sand. They missed out!

For those that have never been sandboarding, it is similar to snow boarding, but on the 120 metre high sanddunes. Mark & Dan joined Steve along with the Dutch couple, and were very excited when we arrived at the base of the dune just in time for the weather to clear.

This photo is from Claire's skydive DVD and is the location for the boarding.

There were two options at the sandboarding, stand-up or lay down. I chose the stand-up version. After three runs down the dune (and the long walk back up the 80 metre dune) I started to slowly get the idea. At this point we were given the opportunity to give the lay down style a go. Apparently we didn't need the gloves or knee guards that the others had, or the 4 warm up runs down the easy part of the dune. Instead those of us that had chosen the stand up option went straight into the fastest lay down run of the day. This time the 80 metres was almost vertical, reaching speeds of 72 kph!! The only advice that I remembered was hold the board up, and that you could use your toes as brakes. Thankfully there were no major incidents.

All in all, a fantastic experience. Unfortunately we're still waiting for the DVD footage of our boarding to come.......... so these photos are courtesy of Dan.

Quadbiking

The afternoon activity was Quad Biking on the dunes. Again the scenery was incredible. There were a couple varieties of bikes, from Automatic (but less powerful), Semi-Automatic (you had to change gears, but you didn't have to worry about a clutch), and Manual (which were apparently the fastest). Most of us went for the semi-automatic, which was a good choice.

As the dunes are a protected area, there are only certain parts that we were able to drive on. Basically we were split off into groups of about 6, and it was follow the leader. The only exception to this was Johannes, who can only be described as a crazy man behind the wheel!

We weaved our way up & down & around the dunes, and eventually made it to "the lookout" which was a point high on the dunes but close to the coast. To see the sand dunes plunge straight into the ocean was a fantastic memory.

The final memory I had to take away from the quadbiking experience was my melted trekking pants! It seemed that my right leg was resting against a hot part of the engine, which i hadn't noticed during the noisy & bumpy ride. I was glad that they had lasted the majority of our African adventure, as we were on the home stretch now.