Our Weekend of Adventure

Still excited about our recent purchase of our new Nissan Patrol (I use the term ‘new’ loosely, the beast is nearly 18 years old and has already done 280,000kms), we loaded up the tank with camp beds, tents, coolbox and enough munchies to feed a small town (or at least keep the kids happy in the back) and headed to the coast.

Breaking the journey at Okahanja on Friday night, we joined other volunteers for a ranch style meal where Alan had the biggest steak had ever seen in his life. His mum would have been proud of him as he struggled on and managed to devour every last morsel, something he regretted for the next four days as it lay in his stomach like a goat in the pit of a python.

Swakopmund was our destination, with the spectacular 380 km transition from semi-arid bushland to white desert providing the in-flight entertainment. We pitched our tents in the grounds of the Youth Hostel (we won’t talk about the facilities here) ideally placed to explore the rather strange town on foot. Late in the afternoon we took the back road to Walvis Bay with ideas of a gentle stroll up the famous Dune 7 to witness a spectacular sunset with our new friends.

The near vertical climb to the top of this mighty sand dune nearly finished me off, how the kids ran up and down it I can’t quite fathom, the camera I was carrying must have been what hampered me…….however, despite the clouds and subsequent lack of sunset, the views from the ridge were AMAZING, almost worth the pain.

On Sunday morning we finetuned our sandboarding skills with Alter Action and Eilidh and Cameron jointly broke the speed record for our group clocking up measured speeds of an impressive 69 km/h. As I watched my 10 year old been given some basic instruction before being pushed headfirst on a piece of plywood, into a 500 ft sand gully, I was grateful that I am not the worrying kind.