Swakopmund

After our pleasant stay in Windhoek we have moved to the coast to do some activities in the fresh air. The city of Swakopmund is well known for the many fun sport opportunities. Sky diving, desert hikes, Quad biking, sandboarding and sliding and a lot more things can be done.

We arrived yesterday and it was indeed a very special impression for us. Instead of blue sky, high dunes and a great view out to the ocean it was overcasted, foggy and cold. Nevertheless we decided to go for sandboarding, sliding and on Friday to the big uranium mine 60km out of Swakopmund.
The town feels like a genuine German town with influences of whole Germany. There are many German signs from the foundation of the city but also enough people remain who speak German. Afrikaans is also similar to German and that makes it also feel like home. Like the rest of Namibia everything is just like home but not Africa. Clean, proper, safe...

Sandboarding

Today was our special day. Again a sport activity! We wanted to check out how sandboarding feels and how you get up. The second question was answered first when we walked up the dune. The great is standard snowboard gear and I had a short Burton deck with strap-on bindings. The base of the board is a special plastic base with better gliding characteristics then the original wax base. As we arrived on top of the 90m dune no.7 we just had to ride down like on we powder snow. Before we started we had to wax the board and the excessive wax was washed away with dry sand. After the third time down I started to use the kicker and at the end of our session I was almost able to fully stand it.
The specialty of the day was to slide down on a plan deck back of the dune. The fun thing was the high speed we reached. Up to 72km/h! The record of the day.
After sandboarding for three hours we had a final snack at the base of the dune and later at the evening a DVD of the day. I highly can recommend trying out this sport. It's really fun!

We'll be back in Windhoek on Saturday before we rent a 4x4 for a trip to the red desert. We'll camp in the desert and climb up a 380m high red dune before we finish our stay in Namibia and continue to Cape Town for the final stop.