February 14th, 2009

Today we finally arrived in Namibia! But first let me tell you about the rest of last night. Last night after the funny logistical preport given by Luke (he does the daily announcements) when I got back to my room, my door was overflowing with valentines cards from the girls! 

 

Back to today, this morning Dylan and I woke up to try and watch the sun rise while we came in to port. We met out in the hallway at about 6:30 and headed up to the front of the ship on the top deck. When we got there, there was a sign saying the winds were too strong for us to go out on the deck, so that ruined our plans and we tried to go out to the back of the ship. When we did that the crew had just washed everything down and it was wet so there was nowhere to sit. Oh and did I also mention it was really cloudy out so we wouldn’t really be able to see the sunrise anyways. Dylan decided to go back to bed and I went to go write some emails. We met back up at 7:30 for breakfast outside with the girls and watched us pull into the port and dock.

 

 Namibia is what I expected and when I looked out I saw a small town and behind it I could see nothing but desert. At around 8 we all watched our diplomatic briefing on the TV in Kelly’s room and then were told we wouldn’t be getting off the ship for 3 or 4 hours because they only had one passport stamp. After the diplomatic briefind Dylan, Abby and I went outside because there was a young group of choir girls performing on the dock. It was really crowded on the dock so I pushed my hand over and got a quick picture. Although I didn’t really get to see them perform because we were stuck on the ship for the next few hours I did get to see them take a tour of the ship and talk to one of their teachers. After trying to get a quick picture Dylan, Abby, and I went to watch The Notebook in Dylan’s room ( a great valentines movie for a group of girls) until we were able to get off the ship. 

 

Around noon I had lunch with all the girls, we finished packing and met up with the rest of the girls at 2 to head off to our hotel. The hotel had sent a shuttle to the port to pick us up and take us which was really nice!! We took about a five minute drive and arrived at our hotel. The girls and I were kind of confused why were staying so close to the ship instead of staying on the ship. But went with it and decided we couldn’t bail and that we probably needed a few nights away from the ship anyways. 

 

We all unpacked our things and met in the lobby to talk to the owners of the hotel to see what we should go do. They recommended a restaurant called The Raft only a five minute walk up the road right on the beach overlooking the water. Before leaving for lunch at the Raft we also set up a shuttle through our hotel that would take us to Swakupmond, a town about 30 minutes from Walvis Bay where we were ported. Walvis Bay was a very small beach town and we heard that Swakumpond is where we should head at night. The shuttle would take us back and forth from Swakumpond like a personal taxi for just our group for only 15 dollars for the entire night. We thought this was a good deal to keep us safe and not get ripped off by a real taxi.

Also before going to The Raft our tour guide for the next two days; off-roading (4x4) tomorrow and atving and sandboarding the following day showed up at our hotel to take our payments and get everything prepared. His name was Fani and we was a very nice man, who appeared to be German, grew up in the north of Namibia and also spoke Afrikaans.  Some of us needed to go to an ATM and he was nice enough to drive us to one. It was funny trying to figure out with Erica and Anna how much money to get out of the ATM because the exchange rate is currently 10 to 1. So I owed Fani 1860.00 Namibian dollars and also needed cash for the food, shopping and other things, when I went to the ATM getting out such a large amount of money and typing in that number made me nervous. The ATM shot out so much money in 100’s it made me feel nervous to be holding such a large bundle of cash but in reality I was really only holding about 300 US dollars and but had to take out 3000 from the ATM. Okay enough about that but Fani was a very nice man and I knew our tours for the next two days would run very smoothly. 

 

After figuring all this out, we went to The Raft. It was really pretty and when I looked around the town I felt as though I was partly in Newport because the beach houses were so nice but the look of everything reminded me of Florida. The restaurant was like a cross between Joe’s Crab Shack kind of feel and Ruby’s Diner because it was out on a small pier. We all ordered some drinks, platters of sea food, pizza’s and french fries. We sat there for maybe 3 hours enjoying talking and eating. The local beer was so good!!! And only a dollar. I took off a label of the beer to bring back to show everyone. 

 

So now that we were all stuffed and getting slightly tired, we went back to the hotel to freshen up and head to Swakumpond before we changed our minds. On our walk back to the hotel we stopped at a beach house and talked to some local teenagers, they were about 15 and 16. A few of the girls ended up coming to our hotel where we talked about music, sports, and they even taught us some Afrikaans. Once we were all ready we sat in the bar at the hotel and had one more drink before taking our shuttle to Swakumpond. At the bar we met Maurice we was an 18 year old boy from Walvis Bay, and was very nice. We talked about similar stuff we did with the girls music MTV and such. Also at the bar were 4 men; two from London and two from New Zealand. They were all there for fishing trips. Walvis Bay and Namibia are famous for fishing for sharks. I sat and talked with them for a few minutes about that. They said the record for the largest shark caught at the hotel we were in was done by 2 women, and the shark was 500 pounds and took them 3 hours to real in. Many of the girls seemed disturbed by the shark catching stories but were okay with it when they explained they didn’t kill the sharks. 

 

At about 8 we headed to Swakumpond to go to a few bars and maybe grab some more food. Our shuttle was really nice and we listened to Rick Deez on the radio and sang to songs by the Back Street Boys and Beyonce our entire way to Swakumpond. Swakumpond is a German town in Namibia. 

 

Our night started at The Lighthouse a restaurant/bar on the beach. It was really nice and when we got there we ran into Wyn and a bunch of other SAS kids. We sat down and ordered drinks and more food. Food in port is so exciting to finally get away from the ship food. After The Lighthouse we tried to find this bar Rafters we were recommended to go to by Maurice, but our driver didn’t know where it was so we went to the Lodge instead. They had good music and we danced for a while. Maurice actually ended up showing up at The Lodge with one of his friends and it was kind of cool to run into and know a local only our first night there. Traveling with 12 girls at night can be a little challenging and of course we all didn’t want to leave at the same time. So it took some time to figure all of that out. 

 

While all of the discussions were going on about when to leave, how to pay, who was going went on. Erica and I sat outside talking to Maurice and his friend. Only a few minutes into the conversation Maurice’s friend wanted to ask us a question but said he wasn’t sure how to. We said he could ask us anything and so he did. His question was “Are we or many kids our age from the states racist?” (Let me remind you Maurice and his friend are white as are many Namibians) We were kind of taken back by the question and answered as best as we could saying that we weren’t and most people aren’t, although perhaps maybe some people from older generations or certain parts of the country. To our surprise he responded by telling us he was extremely racist and I got the impression that many of their friends were. Later, Erica and I discussed this with everyone and we were all surprised giving our different opinions on why it might be like that somewhere where we assumed racist was not a large issue. We finally figured everything out and about half of us took the shuttle back, and the other half stayed in Swakumpond to go to more bars and find a taxi back to our hotel. 

 

When we were getting ready for bed Kelly and I ran around the room shutting all the windows because we were slightly nervous about bugs. And right as were about to go to sleep Erica screamed and found a huge beetle in her room and started telling us stories about the scorpion she saw outside our room, needless to say it took me a while to fall asleep because I was by the window and worried about scorpions for the rest of the night. I finally got to sleep and when I woke up had worried for nothing because I didn’t have a single bug bite.