'Swalkin around Swakopmund, Namibia

I had no idea what to expect in Namibia. I just thought there would be a ton of tribes and they would all live in huts. Shows just how ignorant I, and pretty much everyone else, was.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

-Namibia is a beautiful country where sand dunes meet the sea. It’s so cool and I’ve never seen anything like it before

-Swakopmund, the city I spent my whole time in Namibia in, is surprisingly a small German town! Many people spoke German there and there were quite a lot of Caucasians

-It may have just been in Swakopmund, but Easter is a very important holiday there. All 4 days I was there from Friday-Monday, the majority of shops were closed due to the 4-day Easter Holiday

-People like to decorate their restaurants with funny puns, jokes and quotes

-Meat is extremely popular in their diet in Namibia

-There are only 2 movie theatres in all of Namibia!

-Many people here I personally noticed were openly gay and there is wide gay acceptance

-There are Pizzerias everywhere!

DAY 1

I had my last field lab on the first day we arrived in Namibia with my Evolutionary Psychology class. It was an absolute blast (and of course a good learning experience as well). We hopped on our bus and set off for a center called “COSDEF” about an hour away from Walvis Bay in Swakopmund. It was a beautiful drive and I instantly realized how beautiful this country was. We arrived at COSDEF which stands for “Community skills development foundation” and there were many little shops around that had all handmade stuff in them. One of the ladies that worked there told us a bit about it and we got a few minutes to look around in the shop where I got a few cool bracelets. We then followed her to another building and went upstairs to a fashion design room. There were a few women in the room in class and they were sewing designs they came up with. They were all so talented! We went next door to the music room and we each grabbed 1 of about 6 instruments and we each learned a part from the teacher and put it all together; it sounded awesome! Then my 70 year old teacher showed off his drumming skills and damn, he can drum!

After all of this, we went down to the restaurant there and had an amazing meal of Oryx (a type of antelope). That was definitely a first and I was a bit weirded out at first about eating an antelope, but it was really good! After getting nice and full, we left and went to go to a township where we got to visit some children who were in a childcare program. We then sat down and a guy gave us a “click” lesson where we learned how to say different words with different clicks from our tongue which was really cool! After learning a few words, we actually then went to a bar a few minutes away! They first served us some food in some other room behind the bar and I ate a worm! It was fried and tasted salty honestly kind of like seaweed…the texture was so nasty but I’m glad I did it since when abroad, I try to say “yes” to most things. After eating the worm with a few friends and of course filming ourselves doing it, we all went inside the bar and got a free beer (well I got delicious Savanna Dry Premium Cider because I’m special like that) and then an amazing acapella group came in and sang a few songs for us. They were SO good and even sang “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and it made me so happy and at that moment, I realized that I was actually in Africa.

It was already such a great field lab, but what we did last was a perfect way to end it. We got driven to a sand dune called “Dune 7” and climbed to the top! There was a way on the side that was way easier, but some of us more daring people decided to go straight up it. We were straight up crawling and I had to rest multiple times. It probably took about 15 minutes to get up the whole thing, I was dying! But finally when we made it up, Heather, Dani, and I took some amazing pictures and we were just on top of the world. It was a great field lab and I had to write a paper how all our activities related to topics studied in our Evolutionary Psychology class which was difficult to come up with at first, but I later realized pretty much everything can relate to evolution.

DAY 2

I took a taxi to Swakopmund with Scout and another guy who decided to share the taxi with us because it was about an hour long ride. Scout stayed the previous night in Swakopmund and found a really nice and cheap condo at a place called “Lifestyle Apartment”, but she only had it for one more night because someone had already reserved the room for Easter weekend. So after dropping my stuff off at the condo, we walked around the cute town and tried to find a hotel for the next couple of nights. After going to a few and finding out they were all fully booked, we doubted we would find one and thought we would have to sleep on the ship for the remaining days. But then we walked towards the ocean and found a nice hotel by the pier called “Hotel a la mer” and snagged a nice ocean-view room for a very reasonable price too.  

When we were reserving the room, we met a nice German girl who actually ended up being one of our sandboard instructors the following day! We then found an excursion place called Desert Explorers where we ran into other SAS friends who were booking fun stuff like sky-diving and camel riding. Scout and I wanted to do some excursion that day but everything was booked up. We decided to have an action-packed day the following day so we booked both sandboarding and quad bikes! So Scout and I found a nice little restaurant to eat at that had really funny puns all over the bar stools and walls. I was starving so I got some special meat platter they had but it was so much, I couldn’t finish it. Mind you, Scout is a vegetarian. Oh well. So at the restaurant, Scout ran into a guy from the US who she met the day before. She got his number and he later came back to our condo to hang out. We somehow got a complimentary bottle of wine at the condo so we drank some of that and went to this pizza place that turns into a bar/club at night called Napolitana. There were a ton of people around our age there but also some adults and even kids. It was so weird but we had so much fun.

DAY 3

A van picked us up in the morning to take us sandboarding! It was actually kind of chilly out and there had been light rain that morning, and we got in the car and there were a few SAS’ers already in there. We drove for 30 or so minutes and parked at the bottom of a dune we would be sandboarding down. We all got our boards and helmets and trekked up a big dune and we were all panting when we got to the top. I can’t imagine how much more awful that would have been if it was a hotter day! After a few instructions and separating into our “stand-up” and “lay-down” groups, we were ready to go down the dune. I was one of the only ones who had actually snowboarded before so they encouraged me to go first and so I did. It’s definitely harder to get moving than snowboarding and harder to turn as well but I got a good halfway down until I decided to slow down then fell. I later discovered my GoPro had fallen out of my pocket when I fell and I got so lucky that the German instructor found it. I thought it would’ve been lost in the sand forever!

I went down about 3 times because I was dead tired from trekking up the dune every time. But I tried lay-down sandboarding one time down the other side of the dune and I went way faster than I thought! They documented my speed but I don’t remember how fast it was! I just remember it was one of the fastest. And that came with consequence. I tried to slow down at the end after a little dip which made me go faster, and I brushed my elbow against the sand then crashed face first into the sand. It was all over my face, in my eyes, mouth, hair, everywhere. I started laughing but it was really annoying especially since I went down once more after that. I got back to the stand-up side and a SAS guy, Michael, convinced me to try the jump. Watching people go off it and wiping out really freaked me out, but it was my last time going down so I decided to give it a shot after Michael talked me into it/forced me to. But I’m glad I did it! I went off the jump and even almost landed it but had a pretty smooth landing that turned into a fall. Not a single person actually landed the jump. This was all caught on video and I definitely feel like a badass when I watch it!

We then went back to our condo and moved our stuff over to our new hotel. After we took a little breather, we walked to Desert Explorers to set out on our second excursion of the day. Swakopmund really is that small of a town, most things are walkable. We got to the place and got our helmets on and got seated on our quads. We were out riding for 2 hours which felt like forever but it was so amazing. It was terrifying at first because I was scared I would fall off of it when I turned (I AM a total clutz) but I got the hang of it. At some points we had to go almost full speed to make it up a dune and it was pretty scary but I felt so free. We stopped in the middle of the desert about halfway through our excursion and just chilled, took pictures, and soaked up the environment. It felt like we were the only people in the world. Namibia is so beautiful! We headed back, but every time we went by little plants our guide would look at them to see if any creatures were in them. We saw a snake and the cutest chameleon! Such strange creatures.

We were pretty tired after our full day but we cleaned up and decided to go out for dinner (well, we didn’t have any food so of course we had to go out). We walked parallel to the beach in the dark and made our way to a restaurant that was either right under a lighthouse or part of an old lighthouse. There was a wait and the hostess offered to seat us at a table outside that’s generally used for people waiting to get seated. So we sat there and I ordered steak (so much meat!) and then we ran into a few other SAS’ers who decided to join us. We then got told that there was a table in the restaurant we could all share with a few other people already eating and we said that’d be great! They were a group of Namibian natives in their late 20s/early 30s who were drinking and were so funny! They were all so friendly and they were fun to listen to. I would’ve talked to them more but Scout and I were dead tired from our busy day. They told us about some bonfire/party in the desert that sounded amazing and invited us to come along, but I didn’t even know how I could get enough energy to make it back to our hotel. I think the other SAS’ers ended up going and I hope they had fun! That would have been an amazing experience for sure.

DAY 4

We wandered around the town after a good night’s sleep. Still not many places were open due to Easter, but it was Easter Sunday so we weren’t expecting much. We wandered around and found 2 different churches and thought it would be cool to attend an Easter service, but we had slept past all of them. We kept wandering around and found a nice restaurant to eat at. There was gluten free pizza on the menu and I was so excited, but someone had just ordered the last one like 30 minutes before me! Of course that would happen. I got nachos instead, which were so good, and we decided to also split a Dom Pedro which is this amazing South African drink that is a smoothie mixed with alcohol (we got yummy amarula in ours). After dinner, we walked close by to this area that had a nice hotel, a few restaurants, a casino and a movie theatre. Mind you, this was one of TWO movie theatres in ALL of Namibia! I couldn’t believe it. And the new Divergent movie (Insurgent) had just come out and we happened to be there just in time for a show time. The movie theatre was a part of Swakopmund Hotel & Entertainment Centre and was called Atlanta Cinema and when you buy your ticket, you reserve your exact seat (I was C1). The movie was good but they had the volume pretty low! It was definitely a unique experience though and I’m glad I got to do something normal and compare it to home.

After the amazing movie, we walked right next door to the casino. We sat at the bar debating a drink and I decided to get a “Sprinbok shot” which as I said in my South Africa blog post, is amarula mixed with a peppermint liqueur. It was green on the bottom and brown on top, perfectly divided, and looked so cool! After that I spent the tiniest amount of money on slots while Scout watched and we decided that we were still tired from yesterday and walked back to our hotel.

DAY 5

We checked out of our beautiful ocean-view hotel room. We walked along the pier and took some pictures, trying to document the environment in Namibia. We also went in a few shops since finally the long Easter holiday was coming to an end. I bought a carved out Big 5 dangling bell that I am looking at right now that’s hanging from my blinds. It’s one of my favorite souvenirs I got abroad since it reminds me of both Namibia and seeing the Big 5 in South Africa! We went for one last bite to eat and I ordered a burger. I made sure to make the waitress understand my gluten allergy, and after biting into the burger, I noticed there were onion rings that I assumed were not gluten free. I was so hungry so I decided to take a few more bites away from the rings before I asked. Turns out, the onion rings were fine but the actual hamburger patty somehow had flour in it. I was so mad and the woman said she would get me something else, and when I waited a while and they brought it out, she was going to charge me for both the first burger and the next thing I got! She was ridiculous and I think I just waited until I got back to the ship to eat.

Of course, the stomach ache came on and lasted for days. I’m lucky to say that that was my only big gluten contamination story in all of my travels and I’m okay with that. It could’ve been way worse, but I’m proud to say I got by in every country!

I loved my time in Namibia and the country was so different than I had imagined. I was not expecting to find a cute German town where the desert meets the sea in some African country I hadn’t heard much about before the voyage. I had a really relaxed yet adventurous time in Namibia!