Sept. 4 / Day 8: Swakopmund to Spitzkopff

Skeleton Coast - Seal Colony, originally uploaded by Andrew & Yvette's world travel.

We left our bungalows today to head towards another bushcamp = ( I’m also on cook group duty today so that would have potentially meant double = ( However, our 2nd cook, Jackson, Charles’ brother, joined us in Swakopmund. When I reported for duty bright and early, Jackson told me, ‘No worries, grab yourself a cup of tea and I’ll call you when I need ya. ’

After packing up, we headed over to the city center to pick up some last minute grocery essentials. I also bought Andrew a 2nd year anniversary gift: a nice plush red suede (machine washable) pillow that was on the super clearance rack. I buy myself a matching one as well.

Freezers and coolers stocked full again w/ junk food, processed meat and liquor, we next headed to the Skeleton Coast to the Seal Colony. As the name implies, the colony is home to thousands of howling, screeching seals and the jackals that try to eat them. Cute as the imagery that a colony of seals may conjure up, this place was anything but. The noise of a thousand seals screeching thunderously was headache inspiring and the smell of carcass & feces were nauseating. To take my obligatory tourist pic however, I braved the putrid stench, jumped out of Helena onto the gangplank and then jumped back in the truck w/n 3 minutes flat to join Joy in closing all the open windows and then shrieked at whomever ran back in to shut the door. Ten minutes later everyone was gagging to go but couldn’t b/c Tim & Sue, whose olfactory senses were long since numbed after 20 years of raising the twins (Peter & John), wanted to properly explore the area.

Back on the road again, Emily then got stopped by a policeman for speeding. As speeding tickets aren’t reimbursed to crew, and all of us come from countries where bribery is illegal, we watched and listened in eagerly to the wheels of money illegally changing hands. Unfortunately nothing of the sort happened. The guy just happened to recognize the Drago bus and pulled us over as Drago crew are good sports about conversing re: darts, the policeman’s favorite pastime.

Next up after that, was a rather modern ship that had run aground on the coast. Thinking it to be an interesting enough detour, Matt took the bus off the road and onto the sand. Several minutes of what turned out to be a not very interesting photo op afterall, we loaded onto Helena again. Matt backed up, kicked up a lot of sand in the air and *voila* we’re stuck in the sand. We all moan off the bus and split into two groups: the nice, helpful, industrious group who folded up their sleeves, got some shovels and helped w/ the sand guards; and the nice, lazy, spectators who looked on and yelled encouragements (Sammy and I were in a subset of the 2nd group: the ones who weren’t gonna get dirty b/c we were bushcamping that night *hello*)

We arrived at Spitzkopff, the Matterhorn of Namibia, w/ just enough time to scramble up the rocks to take pictures during the golden hour. The views of the bald granite peaks that stood out dramatically from the flat surroundings were breathtaking.