Hi-o,
On thursday i turned in my final project for my botswana program and on friday, i hopped on a bus for the 12hour ride to namibia. I tried my best to convince someone from my program to come with me but in the end I just went a le nosi (by myself in setswana)
The bus from Gabs stopped at this random corner in the middle of Windhoek with no taxis in sight but thankfully i had made two friends on the bus who were more than willing to give me a lift to my hostel. Patrick Limbo, a nice older gentleman, and his wife drove me to the hostel in their mercedes and even walked in to make sure the place was ok. So nice! That night i ended up in a tiny car with 7 dudes driving to eat kudu (a type of antelope) steaks and go dancing. It was literally like the clown car--people just kept squishing in. I ended up traveling around with a new zealander, some irish guys, and a brit. They were fun-loving guys and didn't give me too much trouble for being a "yank". We rented a tiny volkswagon golf and proceeded to inhale large quantities of namibian dust bumping along the dirt roads in our tin can of a car (no power steering, no air con, minimal shock absorbers...). It was quite an adventure and I had to sleep in the car because i didn't have a tent with my two blankets i had purchased at Pep the day before (kind of like southern african target). It was a cold and slightly less than comfortable night, but short because we woke up at 3:50am to trek to the biggest dunes in the world. Sossussvlei and deadvlei were some of the most beautiful red dunes and we had so much fun hiking around runing/tumbling down them. The brit even whipped out his camp stove and made a cup 'o tea for all of us as we sat in the middle of this dry pan with ancient tree stumps (naturally we were ruining everyone else's photo-ops). I wish i could attach pictures but that will have to wait. After the dunes, we headed east to Swakopmund. This is exactly like a little German town (i even had apple strudel!) and I got to see the ocean!!!! I had been landlocked too long for any good californian. It was so nice to just walk from the hostel to the water. Swakop was so strange because it felt like europe but then right outside of town it felt like the sahara, sand and all. I even went camel riding with my travel buddy and was histerically laughing the whole time because it was so ridiculous. Our last day there, we went to the local lumber store, bought wood and rope, and constructed our very own dune boards. They worked in concept as in they got us from point a to point b but were a little anti climactic as we could walk down the dune faster. Next time, I'm springing for the legit dune boarding but it was still fun. The last night, i went back to Windhoek and danced the night away only catching forty five minutes of sleep before the 12 and half hour ride back to Gaborone, Botswana. A whirlwind adventure and a great first experience traveling alone.
xoxo
Caitlin
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