Got back to Gabs last night around 11 pm. We drove from 6am til 11pm—and I did most of it because the car was a manual. It was tiring, especially the driving at night. There are no streetlights and it’s not just the road you have to watch but the shoulders and surrounding grass area, too. Cows, goats, donkeys, and foxes were not uncommon. Several times we would come up to cows standing in the middle of the road. My biggest fear was not seeing one and hitting it, hurting not only our rental car, but also the other girls in the car. So, we drove slower and watched the road very closely. It was the hardest workout my eyes have ever gotten! The drive, especially that done in Bots makes me appreciate lit roads and fenced-in farmland so much more now. And I can understand my dad driving the whole 12 hours to Colorado every year…when you have people in the car you care about you WILL stay awake…you don’t have a choice! Jen helped drive at the end so I got to rest a little bit in the backseat.
Once back in Gabs, we dropped Jen off at her house, and then I drove Emma to her house. As we pulled out onto the main road, I hit a pothole (there are many on the city roads), and soon after, we hear a piece of metal roll off the car…oops. Unsure of what I had just heard, I asked, “Was that from our car?” Emma replied, “Yep, sure was,” as she chuckled. We had just lost a hubcap! We had driven over 3000km, had no car trouble whatsoever, only to arrive safely back in Gabs and lose a piece of the car 5 minutes from our final destination. I pulled onto the shoulder and reversed to try to get closer to the place where we lost the piece. Emma and Sophie got out to look in the ditch for it (using their Nokia flashlights). They were unsuccessful and about to give up when a combi drives by us going the other way and runs over something sounding like metal…ah ha! He found it for us—funny thing was when he pulled over, opened his window, and asked us if we had lost something. I quickly answered, “Yes, but you just found it for us!” Emma ran across the street to pick it up and brought it into the car with us. We were so tired and couldn’t believe that happened but we shared a good laugh from it. I’m just thankful we (or I guess the combi driver) found it!
Overall, the weekend was so great. We did some really awesome activities. Learning to sandboard was really fun, but, in my opinion, not worth the tiring climbs back up the sand dunes. When climbing, it felt like I was getting no where, because every step up the dune I took, my foot slid right back down. It was a great quad workout, but I was quite pooped by the time I got to the top! The most fun part was the sledding portion. From the top of a very steep dune, I lied belly-side down on a thin piece of ply-wood held in position by the tour guides, pulled the front end up toward my head, and then they let go and I flew down the dune! It was really fast...and sort of scary...but SO fun! They normally just do one sled trip down that hill, but we loved it so much, we hiked all the way back up it to do it a second time. Then to get back to where our guides' van was parked, we got to choose between boarding or sledding down (a less steep hill). We asked if two of us could sled down together, and the guys said sure. So, Jen and I sat on one of the boards and sled down---it was hilarious. Jen was in front and due to the excessive amounts of laughing as we sled down, her mouth was filled with sand, her teeth a darker shade because of it. I steered us with my hands in the back, and toward the end of the hill, I don't know what happened but we rolled off the sled and finally came to a stop, Jen, the sled, and me in three different places. Makes me laugh just typing this :)
The other activities we did the next day, Sunday. The boat cruise in Walvis Bay (a town north of Swakopmund) was without a doubt my favorite. We saw great white pelicans, bottle-nose dolphins, heavy-side dolphins, and seals (which were my favorite). The seals were just adorable and before we departed the bay to search for dolphins, our driver used fish to get one of them, named Shelly, to come up on our boat. She was massive! Later on we went to the seal colony and saw hundreds, if not, thousands, of seals. The babies were the cutest ones. They would roll around in the sand and flop around on each other, but the cutest part was when they would awkwardly run a few feet on the beach and then abruptly come to a halt--sort of like the narcoleptic puppy I watched on YouTube today (thanks to Megan's e-mail). Although it was pretty chilly on the cruise, I didn't mind at all because I was so happy to be on the water. There's just something about it that makes me smile. I'd love to live by the water...or the mountains...it just makes me happy to see such magnificence, and to think I could actually live by that...it would be wonderful.
Later that day we went to the camel farm to do a camel rides! I envisioned a ride up and down the numerous sand dunes of Swakopmund, but when we got to the farm, about a 15-minute drive inland, we see that the sand dunes are not within walking distance of the camels, so I begin to wonder what exactly this activity was to entail. We first get fabric wrapped around our heads like how people used to do as they rode camels in the Namib Desert, and then we get led out to the front yard, where our four camels were awaiting us. I was paired with Eatie, and as we all got on our camels, we were then taken across the street, around a field and then back to the farm, a total of about 20 minutes on the camels. The best part was running! I had been on a camel before (at the zoo, of course), but I'd never run with one...it was really fun! After the ride, we asked the sweet old Namibian lady who owned the farm if she knew where we could find a welwitschia (an awesome- and weird-looking plant, or tree actually, that grows in the desert), and she said "Well, come over here then; I have one!" So she showed us the one she herself had planted...15 years ago. I was expecting a huge one, like I had seen in pictures, but this one was so small...only a few leaves! Probably because all the ones I had seen were over 1500 years old!
I'm happy to be back in Gabs, but definitely not looking forward to the work that is quickly catching up to me...same old story every time, I know. I must study for physical chem, physics, HIV/AIDS (test Fri), write a lab report, and do some CIEE work. I am NOT cramming like I did for the last round of tests...but yes, I know I always say that :) Three weeks of class left, then finals until May 6th, and I'm off to SA for some more traveling until the World Cup!
No comments:
Post a Comment