Namibia Part One

When we pulled into port in Walvis Bay, Namibia, I was feeling totally positive, especially after that long stretch at sea from Casablanca. The ship pulled into the port on Saturday morning and we were first greeted by representatives from the American Embassy in the capital of Namibia, Windhoek. This was the first of the “diplomatic briefings”we will have upon arriving in most of the ports. The presentation by the officials repeated most of the information we already knew about the history and population of Namibia, etc. Then, after the briefing, we were told that we could go up to the top deck and watch a girl’s choir perform on the ground below the ship. They were good –dancing and singing together in matching outfits. I have some video (I took a few in Namibia –I think I’m getting the hang of taking videos) of them performing!

There was a group of us –Sara, Julia, Ji, Rachel and Spencer –who all had some time before our first trip was leaving after lunch. So, we decided to go into town. We hit up one of the ATMs (along with a long ling of other SASers) and walked around a bit before deciding on a restaurant for lunch. I think the place was just called “A1 Pizzeria and Restaurant.”We were all hungry and drawn in by a sign that said “PIZZA”that we could read from down the street. The place was very nice and we got a big table and moved another one next to it to accommodate two guys who came in right after us that we knew, Yash and Anchal, and they sat with us.
[SIDE NOTE: UUUUUggghhh. My left shift key just broke –like the button detached from the keyboard. That’s what I get for carrying my laptop around. I’ll have to see if the computer guy can fix it. :o(. Ugh.]
We thought we would have plenty of time, since we got there at about 11:55 a.m. and didn’t need to be back at the ship until about 1:30 p.m. We all ordered pizzas, even though the waitress told us that it might a little while because they hadn’t turned on the oven for the day yet. “Oh well,”we thought. “We have plenty of time.”While we were waiting the same waitress came back and had a bowl full of little bags. She held it above Sara’s head and told her to pick one out of the bowl. Here, it turns out the waitress had made little charms for Valentine’s Day –and she handed them out to all the girls in our group. It was so nice. Mine has red and green beads with a leaf charm on the end. I think it will find a home on the rearview mirror of the Beetle! So, we continue to wait for the pizzas. It’s 12:30, then it’s 12:45 and we start to get worried. We saw them through a few windows still making one of the pizzas. So, we had Spencer go talk to another woman in charge and ask to just take whatever they have done because we were in a hurry to get back to the SAS ship for our trips. They brought out three of the pizzas and we all started sharing and scarfing down the food. They were really good. Then the woman comes over to us, and this is at, like, 1:15 p.m., and tells us that they’re only charging us for those three and that they’ve arranged to give us a ride back to the port in two cars. That was so nice! We were so grateful! So, the girls got in one car, and the driver said that his girlfriend, who’s mother owns the place, was the woman in charge. That was such a genuinely nice thing to do for us! Then, he went back and got the guys. Well, he could only take us to the gate of the port because you need to be authorized to go into the huge commercial harbor. We girls started walking and kept a lookout for the guys behind us –the walk from the gate to the ship was about 15 minutes! As luck would have it, the guys see us from the back of a pickup truck that they hitched onto! It was hilariously lucky! We jumped into the back and sped our way back to the ship. It was just so lucky and exhilarating to have everything work out as well as it did! We got back in just enough time (since we weren’t actually leaving ‘til 2 p.m. –they just like us to be a half an hour early for overnight trips) to have everyone split up, grab our stuff and go to the meeting point in the Union.

The whole group proceeded to the vans outside of the ship to depart for the desert for overnight camping. The ride there was pretty uneventful and I fell asleep for a little bit because I had stayed up late the night before and we lost an hour to a time change. We got to the campsite after at least a couple hours in the van (which had air conditioning, but the bottom vents were spewing hot air :-). It was so strange to see the city, which, is not very big, then have it all change to mounds and mounds and dunes of sand. There are many palm trees among the houses –some big, some small –that are usually surrounded by stone fences (which I later found are popular because they are low maintenance). Then, the sand turns to beach! There were lots of houses along the beach and a development with the roads built and little ‘For Sale’signs on each sandy, houseless lot. We made it to the city closet to Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, after a while and I was fascinated to see their use of English and German in most of the stores, etc. Swakopmund has a lot of German influence on architecture, etc. It’s popular among visiting Germans because Swapkopmund used to be a German colony (when it was West Africa, then South-west Africa.). We were winding and bumping across roads and I didn’t know how the drivers could tell where to go, especially once we got further into the desert where the roads were packed dirt. Then, all of a sudden, we came up on the camp! There were 35 tents in a row around two campfires with big, dry logs and chairs to sit on, a big white pavilion with round tables underneath. There were also portable toilets in little trailers and portable showers (which, I don’t know if anyone actually used. Each tent, including mine –number five –had two cots with blankets and a pillow, a bottle of water and a bar of soap. The first thing everyone did was wander around and try and climb the small rocky mountains that encompassed the camp. I came back to the camp, then decided to wander a little bit further in the desert.

I’m falling asleep as I write, so, more to come later!