Dunes...

Dunes beautiful dunes! For the second most sparsely populated place on earth Namibia has a unique beauty to it… sure, how beautiful could a desert ever really be? Well I have been pleasantly surprised! Been here two days now and it has been quite a bit of fun (outside of the 4 hours we spent at customs trying to get them to release our training equipment so that we can actually carry out our real purpose for being here – training Namibia’s technicians to deal with modern technology) Anyway the end of the Friday afternoon saw us retiring that quest until Monday morning and focussing on finding something interesting to do on the weekend.

So what can I tell you so far? Well there are plenty of places to stay in Swakopmund. It would seem that it is a tourist destination of sorts and as such offers quite a bit of accommodation. June-July tends to be one of their busiest seasons with Summer Holiday visitors from Europe (especially Germany) roaming around in abundance. Any ways… we ended up in a little hotel called Deutsches Haus (Swakopmund was founded by Germans and there are still very strong German influences) and everything seems pretty pleasant – we have 2 English and 4 German channels on the television but a permanent wireless internet connection – thank you technology.

Anyways if you are in Namibia a trip into the dunes is well worth while – I can seriously recomenda "Living Desert Adventures" tour to find the little five: Sidewinders, Dancing White Lady Spiders, Namib Chameleon, and an endemic species of lizard and one of gecko (luminous little fellows with bulbous eyes) Every now and again the tour guide leaps from the vehicle, shoves his hands into the sand and comes up with some prize, legless lizards (no they are not snakes, gigantic beatles) – absolutely brilliant! …for the less cultured four-wheeler trips “rollercoastering” of the slip-faces of the dunes is ball.