Spring 2015 - Day 87: Namibia

Stephanie and I had a very leisurely day today. We got up late and ate lunch on the ship. Which was totally worth it because it was grilled cheese and fried chicken. That never happens. I’m telling you, in port food is significantly better than at sea food because they are cooking for less people. 

We left the ship right after lunch with the intention of trying to find the festival I was told about. I only had a general idea of where it was, so we set out from the south gate. It took a while to walk into town. At least 30 or 40 minutes. The town was not very big. All around the port was a residential area. The houses were all made out of a similar material, bricks. Huge, grey bricks. The town itself didn't look much different. 

We found the area with the grocery stores but we walked past it and kept going for about 10 minutes. Then we went into a smaller grocery store to go to the bathroom. Once we saw the gorgeous array of fruit they had we bought some plums to eat. We also decided to give up on the festival and catch a cab to dune 7.  

There were some cabs right outside the grocery store. We arranged for the cab to take us there, wait for us, and then take us back. It was only about a 15 minute cab ride from where we were. 

It took us 12 minutes to hike all the way up to the top of the dune. I think I became impressed by the 2 minute record. This is the thing that you forget about climbing up a sand dune; when you take a step forward you slide backwards. So it takes double the effort to move forward. 

I also am just not good at climbing hills. Which we know from table mountain. So it was not all that much fun. But we made it and we took some fantastic pictures. And then we got to run down, which was the best part. 

The whole adventure only lasted about 30 minutes, which is exactly what we expected.

We had the cab driver drop us off at the pick and pay. Snacks were definitely something that we needed for our twelve day stretch at sea. I bought more hard candies, since the ones I got in South Africa ended up being the most delicious things ever. I also bought a mango or us to share on our way back to the ship, some more nuts, and a bag of gummy worms. 

Halfway back we decided to break into the mango. We sat on a bench and just started peeling it. As soon as we were on the bench a random guy stopped and started talking to us. It was creepy. And for some reason we knew that was going to happen. So we got up and continued walking, taking bites of the mango as we went. It was one of the juiciest mangoes I have ever eaten, it was all over my hands and dripping down my arm. But it was delicious. 

Sometimes you just need fresh fruit. 

When we were on one of the main streets headed back to the ship we suddenly heard a very loud crash. We turned around to see that an SUV and a truck had collided together and the the truck spun into a tree. Now that was bad but what was worse was that there had been people in the bed of the truck and they had all flown out. 

People were all over the ground, it looked bad. Onlookers started running up to help and all of the men that were working on the construction of a new building right next to where Stephanie and I were standing dropped what they were doing and went to help. 

Since we were so far away and didn't really want to be involved, we just kept walking. I hope everyone was ok. 

My hands continued to be sticky until we were back on the ship. When we were in the port John, the hotel director was walking out and he held up is hand to high five me. I did it without even thinking that my hand was so sticky. Whoops. I hope he didn't notice but he probably definitely did. 

We ate dinner on the ship and then ventured back out to find wifi. Stephanie had found a hotel that supposedly had great wifi. So we took the shuttle to the waterfront area and then walked over to it. Irene was also there attempting the same thing. Turned out that a bunch of SASers had also discovered the same thing. 

It didn't work at all. It was either because there were too many people already on it or they had figured out what we were doing and shut it off. My guess is the former, there were a lot of people there. So we didn't get to go online but I did get to try Savanna Dark. It is a hoppier tasting version of Savanna Dry, I didn't like it as much. 

Once we had given up on the hotel we walked over to The Raft, which was bar like restaurant that became very popular with SASers. We had also heard that they had wifi in their bar area but we couldn't get that to work either. 

So we completely gave up and went back to the ship to go to bed.