Hi all.

Day 18 (not that I'm counting) or Day 7 of the Tour and we find ourselves in Swakopmund, a place that I'd never wanted to visit.  Swakopmund calls itself the 'Adventure Capital of Namibia' and it offers a range of Sand Dune related activities, as that is all that is here.  Oh, and the freezing Atlantic Coast where even dipping your toes into the water briefly causes instant frost bite, so I stayed away from that one.  Having said that, 2 of the boys on this trip, Nathan and Kyle, took to the water with a fishing charter and managed to catch 200+ fish in just over 3 hours. Now if I do the math correctly, that is 1 fish each every 2 minutes, I seriously didn't think that it was possible to bait, cast, catch, reel in, take off, kill, rebait, etc in that time frame.  It's good though, we now get to eat fish every day for the rest of the trip !!!

To get here we have had to do a lot of driving with little reward.  If you know me, you know that I love sports, all of them.  So it was an amazing experience last Monday morning when we stayed at a camp site on the Orange River, right on the border with Namibia and the American in the group, Chloe from Seattle, and I watched the full game from 1H30 to 5h30.  I cheated a little by having a small kip before getting up.  Chloe on the other hand went straight to the bar after Dinner and then just stayed there all night.  She looked terrible but a great effort.  Like she said, she can sleep on the bus, but wouldn't be able to watch her team there.

The first couple of days we were being filmed for a pilot episode that a film crew were attempting.  It was interesting to see the behind the scenes of a show being created and the banter between the crew.  So much so that I think that Showy, Shoot, Chop and everyone else that hangs around this group would make an excellent film crew.  The amount of crap that came out of their mouths, and the put downs and insults was hilariously, I was even getting involve. It was infectious. They are sending me the link when its all done, so that will be interesting.

The activities so far have includes rafting (very slowly, no rapids), looking (over the Fish River Canyon), spotting (animals but only Game so far, except for 4 cheetahs), drinking (trying every local beer), walking (up a bloody sand dune, number 45), photoing (not a word I know), sand boarding (fun, but includes the walking section again, and that sucked) and talking (duh!)

We also have a good mix on the bus: half Aussie's and the others a split, 3 Germans, 1 Brit, 3 Danes, 1 American, 1 Italien, 1 Dutch 1 Swede and 1 French of course.  So far we all get along well but it is still early .....

In the next couple of days we head off to the fun stuff, a Cheetah Park and then Etosha National Park.  This is where we start to see the big animals, the ones that all of the people on Safari's come here for.  Bring it on I say.

Cheers

Payton