25th August 2009

Sorry for the delay since the last update but it seems we are only able to do an update when we have broken down!

So anyway we had the previous problem with the alternator fixed and we were able to leave Keetmanshoop that day to make Mariental in the evening. The garage owner advised us not to travel until the next day as it would be getting dark and the trucks on the roads are a problem. We carried on anyway to make progress. We found a B and B in Mariental and some guy had called Jamie to come over from across the road. Jamie told him to come over to him if he had something to say and we went into the B and B. It turned out the next day that the person calling was from a campsite and it was the oil rig guy we had met in Keetmanshoop. As there was a massive electric fence in the way he had no chance of coming across to us, we are not sure if he ignored us when we tried calling through the fence as he must think we are a bunch of idiots.

We headed to Sesriem which is the campsite before Sossusvlei – the sand dunes in the Namibian desert. The campsite was pretty expensive as we were put in an over flow site, which was the grass outside the gate! We had a pretty cool braai that night with Jackals scavenging for our left overs.

A 4am start and a race to the sand dunes before sunrise was slowed down by a massive queue of cars waiting to get through the gate. We took Kim to the 4x4 car park and had a pretty cool drive through the sand. We climbed a massive dune for sunrise and got some great pictures of the view. After having our fill of the sand and running down the side of the dunes we made the long trip to Swakopmund. After about 70km we went past a sign post saying Sesriem 12km to the left and we missed a short cut that wasn’t shown on our map!

We got to Swakopmund in the afternoon after making some good time on the dust roads and Sean handled some dodgy passes well. In Swakopmund we found a campsite right on the beach which was cool and went out for some pizza. Swakopmund is a nice German town on the coast and was a good place to chill out and relax. We had yet another braai with a few beers and had the local radio blaring out the Landie, we decided to text in on one of the radio phone ins about what your ideal car to own is – “Hi, 3 guys from the UK listening in and traveling around Southern Africa in a 1973 Land Rover, currently in Swakopmund – nothing better to own than a Landie! Stu, Sean and Jamie” we got pretty festive when she read it out on the radio and welcomed us to her country!

On our last day in Swakopmund we went on some quadbike through the desert which was awesome! The guide showed us a few tricks and wheelies he could do and we were able to fly up the side of dunes. We went over a massive dune and the guide went first to take some pictures of us coming over. I went down first and was surprised to see how steep the drop down was, as I got to the bottom, I looked up to see Sean ramping over and nearly flipping his bike as he landed on one front wheel!! The bikes we class and were flicking dust everywhere when you accelerated.