Spring Break NAMIBIA
NAMIBIA
Nine days of camping in the Namibian desert
Our bathroom breaks as a group were on the side of the road as we drove for miles with out any sign of human life in the desert (girls go to the back of the truck, guys to the front). We even had lunch on the side of the road. Our next stop was
Springbok, or Namaqualand as the locals call it, capital of the Northern Cape, South Africa: Population 10,000; best known for its diamonds, copper, and spring flowers. I was extremely surprised to find that this was the capital city because it seemed very small with not too much to do.
Our campground for the night was really nice with tiki huts for bathroom and a bar. The water from the tap was directly unfiltered from the river. The campsite was located on the Orange River which borders South Africa and Namibia. We had time to relax and had a lovely dinner of steak and potatoes (They made chicken for me because I am a vegetarian and they told me that they don't believe that chicken is meat). We spent the evening at the tiki bar getting to know each other. The weather was amazing and the sunset was beautiful over the mountains reflecting into the water. The river turns orange in the light of the sunset and rise due to the reflections of the mountains.
Overview of location of Day 2
"The Orange River was originally called the Nu Gariep ("great river") by the indigenous Nama people. It was named the Orange River by Colonel Robert Gordon, commander of the Dutch East India Company garrison at Cape Town, on a trip to the interior. Gordon
3
named the river in honour of William of Orange, although a popular belief is that it was named for its colour. Nowadays known by its original name Gariep River, it is the longest river in South Africa, covering 1 800 km. It rises in the Drakensberg mountains in Lesotho, where it is known as Senqu, flowing westwards through South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean at Alexander Bay. On its long journey, the Orange offers a variety of vistas: in places seamed by rugged mountain chains and in other parts by endless dune fields.
The river forms part of the international border between South Africa and Namibia and between South Africa and Lesotho, as well as several provincial borders within South Africa. Although the river does not pass through any major cities, it plays an important role in the South African economy by providing water for irrigation and hydroelectric power. The Orange River is also responsible for the diamond deposits along the Namibian coast. Over millions of years it transported diamonds from the volcanic pipes in Kimberley in South Africa to the sea. From there, the currents took them northward and the surf deposited them into the dune fields of the Namib"- Nomad Tours
In the morning I went swimming and tried to swim to Namibia but only made it half way across the Orange River because the current was so strong. The campsite has a stray dog that is very playful and was a lot of fun and made my time go by fast on the river. After packing up and having lunch on the camp site we headed to Namibian customs which took quite some time but was fairly easy coming from the South African border. We took 5 hours driving through barren desert to the next destination learning about the country along the way. The weather is extremely hot and dry. I hadn't seen a single house or car for the past 5 hours.
Fish River Canyon was the next stop, one of the largest canyons in the world. We spent about an hour hiking around it and relaxing on a nice ledge to watch the sunset. I could hear the tiny stream at the bottom of the canyon echoing off the rock walls.
Our campsite was on the desert and we were warned of baboons.
"The Fish River Canyon is the second largest canyon in the world and the largest in Africa, as well as the second most visited tourist attraction in Namibia. It features a gigantic ravine, in total about 160 km long, up to 27 km wide and in places almost 550 m deep. The Fish River is the longest interior river in Namibia, but its flow is now a puny trickle compared with the immense volume of water that poured down its length in ages past. It cuts deep into the plateau which is today dry, stony and sparsely covered with hardy drought-resistant plants such as succulents. The river flows intermittently, usually flooding in late summer; and when it ceases to flow it becomes a chain of narrow pools on the sandy rock-strewn floor of the chasm.
The Fish River Canyon area has a typical semi-desert climate. During the hot summer months (October - March) temperatures can rise to 48°C during the day and cool to 30°C at night. Relief from the heat comes in short spells with occasional thunderstorms. The average annual rainfall in the canyon area is 100mm. During the short winters, temperatures can go below zero at night, but quickly pick up during the day to a moderate 20 to 28°C. " -Nomad Tours
Hobas Campsite www.nwr.com.na/hobas.html
"The Namib Desert is one of the oldest and largest in the world, occupying an area of around 90 000 km², stretching 1 000 km along the Atlantic Ocean coast of Namibia. Having endured arid or semi-arid conditions for at least 55 million years, it is considered to be the second oldest desert in the world, after the Atacama Desert in Chile. It has less than 10 mm of rain annually and is almost completely barren, characterised by dramatic red dunes with sharp ridges, some of which tower 3 000m in the air, the highest in the world. A section of the central Namib Desert incorporates The Namib-Naukluft Park, one of the largest national parks in Africa, as well as the Naukluft Mountains. Despite the harsh conditions, a variety of plant and animal life can be found in the desert. There are some unusual species of plants and animals that are found only in this desert.
The Sesriem Canyon, one of the highlights of the Namib Desert and the entrance point to the western section of the Namib Naukluft Park, was formed by the Tsauchab River, which carved the canyon out of sedimentary rock over the past two million years. During the rare rainfalls in the Naukluft Mountains, the river becomes rapid-running and strong and has over the years created the canyon, now 1 km long and up to 300 m wide. The water held in parts of the canyon provides water for a variety of wildlife that has adapted to life in this arid landscape.
The name Sesriem is Afrikaans and means "six belts", since the early travellers and settlers had to attach six belts together in order to reach buckets down into the canyon to scoop up water."- Nomad Tours
Sesriem campsite http://www.nwr.com.na/sesriem_campsite.html
Day 5
Today we left camp at 5am to see the sunrise over Dune 45. Climbing the dune was extremely exhausting with no breakfast and having to drag my feet through sinking sand all the way up. At points I didn't think I would make it to the top, but I pushed through it! We saw the beautiful sunrise, tumbled to the bottom of the dune and ate breakfast just feet away from the dune, which was a treat for such an early morning workout.
After sunrise I saw gemsbok and springbok on the side of the road on the way back as our truck followed the sun. Our next stop was the deadvlei which is a valley of petrified trees in a dried up lake in Sossusvlei Dunes. We took safari type jeeps through the desert to the sites, spotting wild ostrich and springbok along the way.
We stopped in a town in between sites called Solitaire, literally named after being in the middle of nowhere. After lunch back at the campsite we packed up and rode 2 hours to another side of Namib-Naukluft National Park. We took a jeep tour at the next campsite in the National Park and learned about the desert ecosystem and how the bushmen survived the harsh weather conditions. Our campsite for this night was also in the middle of nowhere. It contained about 3 spots to park and set up camp and it is run by a man named Boesman (Bushman in Afrikaans) Boesman took us on a truck tour into the desert where we saw a carcass of a gemsbok and later a carcass of a zebra. We learned about the circle of life and how each part of the carcass will be eaten by all the animals of the desert. We later learned about the beetles and bugs and how they survive in the dry heat. I was most fascinated by the man's stories about the Bushmen in the desert. The Bushmen could go days without eating, but when they did eat they would devour pounds and pounds of meat to the point that their stomachs needed to stretch to fill it all. Sometimes, when it came to surviving, women would have to leave their babies behind to follow the men to find animals for food. In Namibia, there was a point in time when people could hunt Bushmen and even keep them as pets. Our guide said his grandparents had a Bushman child as a pet to play with his parents when they were children. He learned a lot through what that child taught his parents of what he remembered of the Bushman lifestyle (the child learned Afrikaans and was able to tell them what he remembered about being raised in the desert). Unfortunately it is not possible to live that lifestyle anymore, but there was a lot to learn from the Bushmen, such as sustainability: The Fathers would teach their children never to shoot a mother springbok because then the baby springbok would die and they wouldn't have food to eat in the future. Seems so simple!
At night we slept under the stars without our tents because we didn't need to worry about any animals having the courage to come to our campsite and all of the bugs were burrowing bugs that were feet under the desert sand.
"Namib-Naukluft National Park is an ecological preserve in the Namib Desert. It is the largest game park in Africa, covering about 50 000 square km and a surprising collection of creatures survives in the hyper-arid region, including snakes, geckos, unusual insects, hyenas, gemsbok and jackals. Most of the life here is sustained by sea mists from the Atlantic and sporadic rainfall. The winds that bring in the fog are also responsible for creating the park’s towering sand dunes, whose burnt orange color is a sign of their age. The color develops over time as iron in the sand is oxidized, like rusty metal; the older the dune, the brighter the color. These dunes are the tallest in the world; the most famous of which is Dune 45, which reaches more than 170 m. The dunes were numbered to make the area easier to navigate, and coincidentally Dune 45 is 45 km from Sesriem Canyon.
‘Namib’ means open space in the local Nama language, and the Namib Desert gave its name to form Namibia – "land of open spaces". The park was established in 1907 by the German Colonial Administration. The park's present boundaries were established in 1978 by the merging of the Namib Desert Park, the Naukluft Mountain Zebra Park, parts of Diamond Area 1 and some other bits of surrounding government land.
The Park includes Sossusvlei, a clay pan in the central Namib Desert, fed by the Tsauchab River and known for the high, red sand dunes which surround it, forming a vast sand ocean. "- Nomad Tours
Today we drove up to Walvis Bay where we had lunch. I was surprised after seeing, feeling and experiencing the beautiful, soft, dry sand of the desert that the beach at Walvis Bay was muddy and smelly. Apparently there used to be wild flamingos there but I don't think they could survive in the current state of it. We stopped at the Tropic of Capricorn on the road too. Finally we reached Swakopmund (meaning land of mud) the capital of Namibia. This seemed like a nice city/town feel and we were able to explore a bit. There were lots of tourist shops and a street market with all kinds of handmade crafts. It was our first night in the past week that we were able to sleep indoors at a lodge and it was magnificent. We had dinner in the town and overall it was a relaxing evening.
"Swakopmund Founded in 1892 by German settlers, Swakopmund was intended to be the main harbour of German South-West Africa. Increased traffic between Germany and its colony necessitated establishing a port of its own, as Walvis Bay, located 33 kilometers south, was in British possession. The choice fell to a site north of the Swakop River, where water was readily available. There is a strong German architectural influence in the town, with its Bavarian-style buildings, including the Altes Gefängnis prison, designed by Heinrich Bause in 1909 and the Wörmannhaus, built in 1906 with a prominent tower, now a public library.
The area now known as Swakopmund was orginally called "Tsoakhaub", a Nama word that can be translated as "excrement opening", an offensive but accurate description of the waters of the Swakop River when it flooded, carrying masses of mud, sand, vegetation and animal corpses to the Atlantic Ocean. The name was changed to "Swachaub" by German settlers, and with the proclamation of Swakopmund as an independent district of German South-West Africa in 1896, the present way of writing Swakopmund (meaning Estuary of the Swakop in German) came into use.
Surrounded by the Namib Desert on three sides and the cold Atlantic waters to the west, Swakopmund enjoys a temperate climate. Rainfall is rare, but the cold Benguela current supplies moisture to the area in the form of fog that can reach as deep as 140 km inland. The fauna and flora of the area has adapted to this phenomenon and now relies upon the fog as a source of water.
Swakopmund is well known for adventure sports including: skydiving, sandboarding and quad biking."- Nomad Tours
Accommodation- Amanpuri: http://www.amanpurinamibia.com/
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Nine days of camping in the Namibian desert
Day 1
It was an early morning. I had to take a taxi from my residence with my large backpack and camping supplies to downtown Cape Town to meet the tour group for our 9 day camping adventure through Namibia. After stopping to get a great view of Table Mountain across the bay, our first stop was at museum, !Kwa ttu guided tour to learn about the San people of Africa. We walked into "the bush" and learned about the plants they used and how they used them. Some plants were used for medicine, some as perfume for the women, and some for spices. We also were able to see a simulation of the way the village would be set up. The homes were all built in a circle with the doors facing in. The men of the village would hunt and start the fire for cooking in the center of the homes. At night, the women and children would sleep in the homes and the man would sleep outside with "one ear always awake" in case an animal came. In which case he would go to the closest hut for help making a fire to scare away the animal. We saw the types of clothing they would wear which was only for protection from the sun, and married women would bedazzle their "skirts" with ostrich egg beads to visibly show that she was married. The first thing they would do with the ostrich egg was drill a hole in the egg, scramble the insides to get the yolk out, and eat it. Then, the shell would be used to carry water to "the bush" so that the men could have water while they are hunting. If the egg shell were to drop and break, the man would carry every piece of the shell back to his wife and she would either grind it into a powder to eat and provide the babies calcium, or she would carve, file, and drill holes in the pieces to make jewelry beads. The marriage rituals were very interesting too. If a man was interested in a woman he would hide and shoot her with his bow and arrow (not a sharp one!) and she would return it and thank him. In order to marry her he needs to prove worthy by going into the bush and catching an animal for her. He would also need to light the fire with sticks for it to be cooked. There are only 2 people left in South Africa who speak the mother tongue of the San people. Organizations are run to educate children of the San culture and language to keep it alive.
We reached our first campsite and quickly learned how to pitch our own tents. Although the sun is beating down hot in the day, it got really cold at night. The men with nomad tours cooked for us from a stove that came out of the bottom of the truck and after dinner we had a very peaceful night sleep. The campsite seemed like someone's back yard but it was dead quiet with a beautiful view of the mountains.
Overview of the Campsite and location in Day 1-
"The Cederberg mountains and nature reserve are located near Clanwilliam and named after the endangered Clanwilliam Cedars (Widdringtonia cedarbergensis), which are endemic to the area, growing at an altitude of 1 000 m to 1 500 m. Some species are believed to live up to 1000 years, but human activity has led to the destruction of most of the original forests. The mountains extend about 50 km north-south by 20 km east-west, the highest peak in the range is Sneeuberg (2 028 m). The area is defined by dramatic sandstone rock formations, often reddish in colour. Cederberg Wilderness Area was recently proclaimed one of eight World Heritage Sites within the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. The area is also known for the San rock art and the discovery of important fossils, particularly in recent years. The fossils are of primitive fish and date back 450 million years to the Ordovician Period."- Nomad Tours
Campsite- http://www.marcuskraal.co.za/
Day 2
We woke up at 6am and had to eat breakfast and pack our tents and bags up and onto the bus by 7.Our bathroom breaks as a group were on the side of the road as we drove for miles with out any sign of human life in the desert (girls go to the back of the truck, guys to the front). We even had lunch on the side of the road. Our next stop was
Springbok, or Namaqualand as the locals call it, capital of the Northern Cape, South Africa: Population 10,000; best known for its diamonds, copper, and spring flowers. I was extremely surprised to find that this was the capital city because it seemed very small with not too much to do.
Our campground for the night was really nice with tiki huts for bathroom and a bar. The water from the tap was directly unfiltered from the river. The campsite was located on the Orange River which borders South Africa and Namibia. We had time to relax and had a lovely dinner of steak and potatoes (They made chicken for me because I am a vegetarian and they told me that they don't believe that chicken is meat). We spent the evening at the tiki bar getting to know each other. The weather was amazing and the sunset was beautiful over the mountains reflecting into the water. The river turns orange in the light of the sunset and rise due to the reflections of the mountains.
Overview of location of Day 2
Campsite- www.bushwhacked.co.za
"The Orange River was originally called the Nu Gariep ("great river") by the indigenous Nama people. It was named the Orange River by Colonel Robert Gordon, commander of the Dutch East India Company garrison at Cape Town, on a trip to the interior. Gordon 3
named the river in honour of William of Orange, although a popular belief is that it was named for its colour. Nowadays known by its original name Gariep River, it is the longest river in South Africa, covering 1 800 km. It rises in the Drakensberg mountains in Lesotho, where it is known as Senqu, flowing westwards through South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean at Alexander Bay. On its long journey, the Orange offers a variety of vistas: in places seamed by rugged mountain chains and in other parts by endless dune fields.
The river forms part of the international border between South Africa and Namibia and between South Africa and Lesotho, as well as several provincial borders within South Africa. Although the river does not pass through any major cities, it plays an important role in the South African economy by providing water for irrigation and hydroelectric power. The Orange River is also responsible for the diamond deposits along the Namibian coast. Over millions of years it transported diamonds from the volcanic pipes in Kimberley in South Africa to the sea. From there, the currents took them northward and the surf deposited them into the dune fields of the Namib"- Nomad Tours
Day 3
Fish River Canyon was the next stop, one of the largest canyons in the world. We spent about an hour hiking around it and relaxing on a nice ledge to watch the sunset. I could hear the tiny stream at the bottom of the canyon echoing off the rock walls.
Our campsite was on the desert and we were warned of baboons.
"The Fish River Canyon is the second largest canyon in the world and the largest in Africa, as well as the second most visited tourist attraction in Namibia. It features a gigantic ravine, in total about 160 km long, up to 27 km wide and in places almost 550 m deep. The Fish River is the longest interior river in Namibia, but its flow is now a puny trickle compared with the immense volume of water that poured down its length in ages past. It cuts deep into the plateau which is today dry, stony and sparsely covered with hardy drought-resistant plants such as succulents. The river flows intermittently, usually flooding in late summer; and when it ceases to flow it becomes a chain of narrow pools on the sandy rock-strewn floor of the chasm.
The Fish River Canyon area has a typical semi-desert climate. During the hot summer months (October - March) temperatures can rise to 48°C during the day and cool to 30°C at night. Relief from the heat comes in short spells with occasional thunderstorms. The average annual rainfall in the canyon area is 100mm. During the short winters, temperatures can go below zero at night, but quickly pick up during the day to a moderate 20 to 28°C. " -Nomad Tours
Hobas Campsite www.nwr.com.na/hobas.html
Day 4
We had to be out extra early to start an extremely long day. We started on the road and made our first pit stop in a tiny town seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It had a convenience store, coffee shop, post office and butchery. We were beginning to really feel like we were in the desert. It was a start to a great day because I saw my first wild zebras on the side of the road. A group of us got a little restless with all the driving so someone suggested we play catch phrase in the front lounge of the truck by writing down our own words/phrases and throwing them in a bag- it made the time fly. Where we stopped to make lunch on the side of the road our guide showed us a tree with a large nest in it of the Sociable Weaver Birds. We checked out the campsite in Namib-Naukluft National Park, and then headed to Sesriem Canyon.
This time we were able to walk to the bottom of the canyon and some people in the group took a little swim. There were caves to climb through and the sky looked like a facade of blue. After the canyon, we saw the sunset at camp which I wish I could've captured in pictures but the moon was so bright on one side of camp turning the mountains blue, and the sun was setting on the other turning those mountains orange. I was in bed by 830 for a long day tomorrow. Our driver warned us about jackals on the campsite coming to our tents but nothing woke me up.
This time we were able to walk to the bottom of the canyon and some people in the group took a little swim. There were caves to climb through and the sky looked like a facade of blue. After the canyon, we saw the sunset at camp which I wish I could've captured in pictures but the moon was so bright on one side of camp turning the mountains blue, and the sun was setting on the other turning those mountains orange. I was in bed by 830 for a long day tomorrow. Our driver warned us about jackals on the campsite coming to our tents but nothing woke me up.
"The Namib Desert is one of the oldest and largest in the world, occupying an area of around 90 000 km², stretching 1 000 km along the Atlantic Ocean coast of Namibia. Having endured arid or semi-arid conditions for at least 55 million years, it is considered to be the second oldest desert in the world, after the Atacama Desert in Chile. It has less than 10 mm of rain annually and is almost completely barren, characterised by dramatic red dunes with sharp ridges, some of which tower 3 000m in the air, the highest in the world. A section of the central Namib Desert incorporates The Namib-Naukluft Park, one of the largest national parks in Africa, as well as the Naukluft Mountains. Despite the harsh conditions, a variety of plant and animal life can be found in the desert. There are some unusual species of plants and animals that are found only in this desert.
The Sesriem Canyon, one of the highlights of the Namib Desert and the entrance point to the western section of the Namib Naukluft Park, was formed by the Tsauchab River, which carved the canyon out of sedimentary rock over the past two million years. During the rare rainfalls in the Naukluft Mountains, the river becomes rapid-running and strong and has over the years created the canyon, now 1 km long and up to 300 m wide. The water held in parts of the canyon provides water for a variety of wildlife that has adapted to life in this arid landscape.
The name Sesriem is Afrikaans and means "six belts", since the early travellers and settlers had to attach six belts together in order to reach buckets down into the canyon to scoop up water."- Nomad Tours
Sesriem campsite http://www.nwr.com.na/sesriem_campsite.html
Day 5
Today we left camp at 5am to see the sunrise over Dune 45. Climbing the dune was extremely exhausting with no breakfast and having to drag my feet through sinking sand all the way up. At points I didn't think I would make it to the top, but I pushed through it! We saw the beautiful sunrise, tumbled to the bottom of the dune and ate breakfast just feet away from the dune, which was a treat for such an early morning workout.
After sunrise I saw gemsbok and springbok on the side of the road on the way back as our truck followed the sun. Our next stop was the deadvlei which is a valley of petrified trees in a dried up lake in Sossusvlei Dunes. We took safari type jeeps through the desert to the sites, spotting wild ostrich and springbok along the way.
We stopped in a town in between sites called Solitaire, literally named after being in the middle of nowhere. After lunch back at the campsite we packed up and rode 2 hours to another side of Namib-Naukluft National Park. We took a jeep tour at the next campsite in the National Park and learned about the desert ecosystem and how the bushmen survived the harsh weather conditions. Our campsite for this night was also in the middle of nowhere. It contained about 3 spots to park and set up camp and it is run by a man named Boesman (Bushman in Afrikaans) Boesman took us on a truck tour into the desert where we saw a carcass of a gemsbok and later a carcass of a zebra. We learned about the circle of life and how each part of the carcass will be eaten by all the animals of the desert. We later learned about the beetles and bugs and how they survive in the dry heat. I was most fascinated by the man's stories about the Bushmen in the desert. The Bushmen could go days without eating, but when they did eat they would devour pounds and pounds of meat to the point that their stomachs needed to stretch to fill it all. Sometimes, when it came to surviving, women would have to leave their babies behind to follow the men to find animals for food. In Namibia, there was a point in time when people could hunt Bushmen and even keep them as pets. Our guide said his grandparents had a Bushman child as a pet to play with his parents when they were children. He learned a lot through what that child taught his parents of what he remembered of the Bushman lifestyle (the child learned Afrikaans and was able to tell them what he remembered about being raised in the desert). Unfortunately it is not possible to live that lifestyle anymore, but there was a lot to learn from the Bushmen, such as sustainability: The Fathers would teach their children never to shoot a mother springbok because then the baby springbok would die and they wouldn't have food to eat in the future. Seems so simple!
At night we slept under the stars without our tents because we didn't need to worry about any animals having the courage to come to our campsite and all of the bugs were burrowing bugs that were feet under the desert sand.
"Namib-Naukluft National Park is an ecological preserve in the Namib Desert. It is the largest game park in Africa, covering about 50 000 square km and a surprising collection of creatures survives in the hyper-arid region, including snakes, geckos, unusual insects, hyenas, gemsbok and jackals. Most of the life here is sustained by sea mists from the Atlantic and sporadic rainfall. The winds that bring in the fog are also responsible for creating the park’s towering sand dunes, whose burnt orange color is a sign of their age. The color develops over time as iron in the sand is oxidized, like rusty metal; the older the dune, the brighter the color. These dunes are the tallest in the world; the most famous of which is Dune 45, which reaches more than 170 m. The dunes were numbered to make the area easier to navigate, and coincidentally Dune 45 is 45 km from Sesriem Canyon.
‘Namib’ means open space in the local Nama language, and the Namib Desert gave its name to form Namibia – "land of open spaces". The park was established in 1907 by the German Colonial Administration. The park's present boundaries were established in 1978 by the merging of the Namib Desert Park, the Naukluft Mountain Zebra Park, parts of Diamond Area 1 and some other bits of surrounding government land.
The Park includes Sossusvlei, a clay pan in the central Namib Desert, fed by the Tsauchab River and known for the high, red sand dunes which surround it, forming a vast sand ocean. "- Nomad Tours
Day 6
Today we drove up to Walvis Bay where we had lunch. I was surprised after seeing, feeling and experiencing the beautiful, soft, dry sand of the desert that the beach at Walvis Bay was muddy and smelly. Apparently there used to be wild flamingos there but I don't think they could survive in the current state of it. We stopped at the Tropic of Capricorn on the road too. Finally we reached Swakopmund (meaning land of mud) the capital of Namibia. This seemed like a nice city/town feel and we were able to explore a bit. There were lots of tourist shops and a street market with all kinds of handmade crafts. It was our first night in the past week that we were able to sleep indoors at a lodge and it was magnificent. We had dinner in the town and overall it was a relaxing evening.
"Swakopmund Founded in 1892 by German settlers, Swakopmund was intended to be the main harbour of German South-West Africa. Increased traffic between Germany and its colony necessitated establishing a port of its own, as Walvis Bay, located 33 kilometers south, was in British possession. The choice fell to a site north of the Swakop River, where water was readily available. There is a strong German architectural influence in the town, with its Bavarian-style buildings, including the Altes Gefängnis prison, designed by Heinrich Bause in 1909 and the Wörmannhaus, built in 1906 with a prominent tower, now a public library.
The area now known as Swakopmund was orginally called "Tsoakhaub", a Nama word that can be translated as "excrement opening", an offensive but accurate description of the waters of the Swakop River when it flooded, carrying masses of mud, sand, vegetation and animal corpses to the Atlantic Ocean. The name was changed to "Swachaub" by German settlers, and with the proclamation of Swakopmund as an independent district of German South-West Africa in 1896, the present way of writing Swakopmund (meaning Estuary of the Swakop in German) came into use.
Surrounded by the Namib Desert on three sides and the cold Atlantic waters to the west, Swakopmund enjoys a temperate climate. Rainfall is rare, but the cold Benguela current supplies moisture to the area in the form of fog that can reach as deep as 140 km inland. The fauna and flora of the area has adapted to this phenomenon and now relies upon the fog as a source of water.
Swakopmund is well known for adventure sports including: skydiving, sandboarding and quad biking."- Nomad Tours
Accommodation- Amanpuri: http://www.amanpurinamibia.com/
Day 7
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In the morning I learned how to Sandboard. It was so much fun, but difficult at first. I fell a few times but was told that I am a "natural" at it (I think it has something to do with practicing snowboarding on the Wii fit!). We had to hike to the top of the sand dune each time we went down (no ski lifts!) and it was exhausting but it got surprisingly easier each time, with a communal gallon water jug at the top of the dune. We had to wax our boards each time and my last time down I did a jump! I tried sand boarding on a mat of wood one time but I went so fast (estimated around 60 kph) and at the bottom there was a point when you slide up again on another dune where I face planted and ingested half the dune. Fun and painful all in one. At the bottom of our last round on the dune we were served sandwiches and beer.
In the afternoon I went quad biking in the dunes. This was terrifying! It was my first time on a quad bike and we were driving vertically and sideways horizontally up
the sides of dunes. There was a guide at the front and one at the back to make sure everyone stayed on course. I seemed to end up in the back more often than not and sometimes I would lose the group over a big dune and the wind would sweep away their tracks leaving me in a panic. I got stuck in the sand 4 times because I slowed down when I saw someone in front of me stopped and lost momentum to get up the dune. I didn't fall off once though :-) It was another relaxing evening in preparation for a long day of driving ahead.
In the afternoon I went quad biking in the dunes. This was terrifying! It was my first time on a quad bike and we were driving vertically and sideways horizontally up
the sides of dunes. There was a guide at the front and one at the back to make sure everyone stayed on course. I seemed to end up in the back more often than not and sometimes I would lose the group over a big dune and the wind would sweep away their tracks leaving me in a panic. I got stuck in the sand 4 times because I slowed down when I saw someone in front of me stopped and lost momentum to get up the dune. I didn't fall off once though :-) It was another relaxing evening in preparation for a long day of driving ahead. 
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