Cape Town to Namibia, a shamefully quick narrative
Mon 6th Feb 2006
At the mo I'm in Namibia. The tour is going great. In South Africa (Cape Town) I finally fulfilled my life long dream of swimming with Great White sharks. It was awesome, even though they were only 10-footers they were beautiful and mesmerising and we had a great day out on the boat. The water was freezing and the visibility was terrible unless they were chomping on the cage, which they oblidged in doing a couple of times!! Fyf wet her pants!! I think what will become one of the highlights of my trip will be the moment of the morning I spent perched on the side of the boat drying off in the sun with my legs dangling over the side, with one of the most impressive predators the earth has ever seen circling and glistening in the water just meters beneath my feet. Fantastic!
We also went up table mountain while we were there which was really cool-
it was huge and cold and the top completely flat. Cloud whooshed towards you and around you and over your head, and spilled over the top and down the sheer rock face as if it were a waterfall, only in silence. 
We saw lots of agama lizards and rock hyraxes (below) up there too.
We rented a car and went on a little road trip to some fishing villages with Fyfs brother and his girlfriend who also happenned to be out here same time as us but then I got mega sick with terrible gastro entiritis and landed myself on the doctors trolly yet again! He hooked my up to an IV drip for an hour and now I'm right as rain. Had massive dehydration and puked all over the car on the way back (lovely!!).
We joined an overland tour with 4 other girls and will cruise up to Victoria Falls with them. So far we've been canoeing up the orange river- the divide between South Africa and Namibia,
we visited the fish river canyon- the second largest after the Grand Canyon (well cool!)
and hiked up Dune 45, which is the famous one in the Namib desert that all the photos on calendars are of.
It was only 120m high but it killed us getting up it. You lose all sense of perspective and distance, like being underwater. The desert and dunes were incredible. I never thought I'd sit on the top of a huge dune and watch the sun rise. (At which point, just as the sun spilled through the clouds, lighting the dunes on fire and the range to my side flaming pink, in the most amazing sunrise I'll ever see, my camera broke, having got sand in it. So better pics will follow in the months to come). 
The feeling of walking along the peaks is like nothing I've ever experienced. It's like being on top of the world, or in another world, and is very exhilirating. 
On the way through the desert to the town of Strokupmund where we are now, our truck got stuck in the sand and it took us all night to dig it out. A right palava! we ended up camping right there in the wild and moving on in the morning! Yesterday we visited the Cape Cross fur seal colony. They are actually sea lions though, not seals as their name implies. There were thousands and thousands of them (it smelled a bit ripe!) all with 2 month old babies and you could get so close! It was a truly amazing sight. I felt like David Attenborough.
Tomorrow the girls are going sky diving. I can't afford it and have done it before so am just filming them getting ready and landing etc but am so envious as would love to go again! The day after we're going back out to the desert to go sand boarding- like surfing but in the sand dunes!! The wildlife you see on the sides of the road here is so cool!! Huge birds of prey all over the show, warthogs, more springbok than you can shake a stick at, ostriches, an oryx, I almost ran over a little tortoise when we were road tripping too (near gave me a heart attack)!!! And the beetles are HUGE!!
At the mo I'm in Namibia. The tour is going great. In South Africa (Cape Town) I finally fulfilled my life long dream of swimming with Great White sharks. It was awesome, even though they were only 10-footers they were beautiful and mesmerising and we had a great day out on the boat. The water was freezing and the visibility was terrible unless they were chomping on the cage, which they oblidged in doing a couple of times!! Fyf wet her pants!! I think what will become one of the highlights of my trip will be the moment of the morning I spent perched on the side of the boat drying off in the sun with my legs dangling over the side, with one of the most impressive predators the earth has ever seen circling and glistening in the water just meters beneath my feet. Fantastic!
We also went up table mountain while we were there which was really cool-
it was huge and cold and the top completely flat. Cloud whooshed towards you and around you and over your head, and spilled over the top and down the sheer rock face as if it were a waterfall, only in silence. We saw lots of agama lizards and rock hyraxes (below) up there too. We rented a car and went on a little road trip to some fishing villages with Fyfs brother and his girlfriend who also happenned to be out here same time as us but then I got mega sick with terrible gastro entiritis and landed myself on the doctors trolly yet again! He hooked my up to an IV drip for an hour and now I'm right as rain. Had massive dehydration and puked all over the car on the way back (lovely!!).We joined an overland tour with 4 other girls and will cruise up to Victoria Falls with them. So far we've been canoeing up the orange river- the divide between South Africa and Namibia,
we visited the fish river canyon- the second largest after the Grand Canyon (well cool!) and hiked up Dune 45, which is the famous one in the Namib desert that all the photos on calendars are of. It was only 120m high but it killed us getting up it. You lose all sense of perspective and distance, like being underwater. The desert and dunes were incredible. I never thought I'd sit on the top of a huge dune and watch the sun rise. (At which point, just as the sun spilled through the clouds, lighting the dunes on fire and the range to my side flaming pink, in the most amazing sunrise I'll ever see, my camera broke, having got sand in it. So better pics will follow in the months to come). The feeling of walking along the peaks is like nothing I've ever experienced. It's like being on top of the world, or in another world, and is very exhilirating. On the way through the desert to the town of Strokupmund where we are now, our truck got stuck in the sand and it took us all night to dig it out. A right palava! we ended up camping right there in the wild and moving on in the morning! Yesterday we visited the Cape Cross fur seal colony. They are actually sea lions though, not seals as their name implies. There were thousands and thousands of them (it smelled a bit ripe!) all with 2 month old babies and you could get so close! It was a truly amazing sight. I felt like David Attenborough.
Tomorrow the girls are going sky diving. I can't afford it and have done it before so am just filming them getting ready and landing etc but am so envious as would love to go again! The day after we're going back out to the desert to go sand boarding- like surfing but in the sand dunes!! The wildlife you see on the sides of the road here is so cool!! Huge birds of prey all over the show, warthogs, more springbok than you can shake a stick at, ostriches, an oryx, I almost ran over a little tortoise when we were road tripping too (near gave me a heart attack)!!! And the beetles are HUGE!!
posted by Grace at 7:54 pm
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