Sunny, Sandy Soussusvlei

During our third week, the gang went to dinner.  At this feast I ate snail, kudo, zebra, springbok, ostrich, and crocodile! Delicious!  My apartment even hosted a dinner party.  Needless to say, I was in charge of appetizers (as in cutting and opening dips), wrapping the wine bottles for secret wine tasting, and making the music playlist.  But Jordana and Caeli made amazing main courses/desserts!

After an intense week of report drafting and animal eating, I was excited to embark on another weekend adventure.  The whole crew piled into a van around noon on Friday, April 10th.  We drove for 6-7 hours towards the Namib-Naukluft National Park.  Most of the drive was spent playing 20 questions with my clinic partner.  The landscape was flat, but we saw some ostriches along the way.

We watched the sunrise while sitting on top of the dune. It was truly beautiful.

We pulled into our campsite around 7 pm.  Putting up our tents in the dark was a bit of a challenge, but we succeeded beautifully.  Ironically, most of us didn't even sleep in the tents.  Instead, we opted to spend the night under the stars.  Unfortunately, my stargazing position was impeded by a tree.  To be honest, I was exhausted and I had an early start waiting for me on the other end of my sleep time anyways.

Without fail, we were woken up around 4:30 am to begin our drive to Soussuslvei sand dunes.  The drive took about 30-45 minutes.  As soon as we got to the dune, Julian, Jordana and I took off running.  This was clearly a bad decision because we lost our breath about 20-25 feet up the dune.  The rest of the twenty minute hike up the dune was grueling, and if I didn't know any better I think I tasted blood in my lungs.  Obviously, I am kidding.  Don't worry mom, I am not bleeding from the chest. I think the heavy dust and sand just made all of our chests hurt.

We watched the sunrise while sitting on top of the dune.  It was truly beautiful.  I loved being able to listen to my mp3 player while watching the sun light up the African desert below me.  Another moment in my life that a camera will never capture.

After climbing back down the dune, we enjoyed a light breakfast.  Our next stop was a small canyon nearby.  We climbed around a bit, and even saw a few babboons doing the same! Our canyon escapade was followed by a 5 hour drive to Swakopmund with a couple of beer stops here and there.

Swakopmund is a beach town rumored to have been established for post world war II Nazis.  No, I did not walk around asking people if they were Nazis, but the thought did cross my mind.  Swakop is a quiet and strange little town.  We camped "near" the beach (as in we weren't that close as our guide promised).  Again, we arrived to the campsite after dark and had to struggle with tents.  This time, we all chose to sleep on mats in the tent. S'mores, lamb chops, and whiskey were shared around the fire.  Needless to say, I had a much better rest.

The next morning we all went sandboarding.  Essentially, you use snowboards and snowboard boots on sand.  It was awesome and satisfied the itch I had for hitting the Lake Tahoe slopes one more time before leaving to Africa. I had no problems flying down the dunes.  I was even talked into going off a jump!  All in all, it was a blast.  Our final activity was touring Swakopmund.  We all enjoyed delicious ice cream, and my clinic partner and I even managed to sneak off for a quick swim in the ocean.  I was salty, hot, and tired on the drive home, but the trip was awesome!