Swakopmund, Sand-boarding and New Years

We spent the last of 2011 in Swakopmund.  Basically means the mouth (mund) of the brackish (swakop) river in German.  Its not tough to tell this is a town with strong German roots just from looking at the architecture if not to listening to the locals jabber on in German.  Its a very nice town and is the Adventure Capital of Namibia (much like Queenstown is for New Zealand).  They have all sorts of optional activities here... ranging from tandem parachuting from 10K feet (opening at 1500) to quad ATV biking through the dunes.  I wanted to try paragliding off one of the dunes but it conflicted with our Sandboarding which Jen and I had promised the kids.

We arrived in Swakopmund after another LONG (are you sensing a theme here?) day with a 5am start.  We basically had time to line up our activities for the following day and explore the town a bit on foot.  The stores and shops were open so Jen and the kids had a field day.  Jen was on a mission to find a wooden Giraffe for our landing back home and Lapise (our resident South African nature teacher) had instilled in Shawn a love for rocks so he spent the afternoon haggling with vendors for rock samples.  Both he and Rachel have become very able negotiators and view it with a lot more enthusiasm than Mom or Dad.  

Obvious German influences

They don't call it the Skeleton Coast for nothing!

Its a very neat and tidy town... we felt completely safe

Very pretty too!

The view from the top of the Sandboarding dune.

Rachel getting ready to go down the hill for her first run.

The view of Swakopmund from the top of the dune.  We were WAY up.

Shawn and Bar hiking up the dune

Sandboarding is a lot of fun but is a lot more work than Snowboarding as you have to climb the hill with your board, wax it every run and then go down a hill that is a LOT steeper than anything you'd do on snow. They got some of the guys on mats doing 76kmh on radar.  They didn't clock the Sandboarders.

As mentioned before I had a bit of a wipeout (crossing one of my previous tracks) and the front came to a screeching stop and I went ass over tea kettle over the front of the board and broke my fall with my left wrist (dumb move on my part... I know better than that but wasn't thinking as it surprised me as I was right at the end of the run and was boarding confidently - and fast - by then).  My arm felt numb at the time and my finger tips were immediately bruised but everything felt relatively OK so I did 6 more runs (Shawn did 8 and Rachel did 5 more) before we couldn't lift a foot to climb the dunes again.  You can't imagine what work it is to climb the dune with a Snowboard, your boots when it's 35 degrees and blowing like crazy.    We were told these dunes were over 250 metres high and I believe it.  That's like doing a full run at Blue each time but there isn't a run at Blue or even Georgian Peaks that is as steep.

Anyway, I later discovered that I actually fractured a couple of bones in my hand and perhaps even one in my arm just above my wrist.  Once I got a splint on it I was fine.  Cammie, the next time you break something go out drinking on New Years eve and you won't feel much pain.  :-)   I would still have done the Sandboarding but its not something we'll all rush back to because it is so much work.  They even had a jump which Shawn of course spent every run going over.  Rachel and Shawn also tried their hands on the mats for a run.  I couldn't hold up the end so didn't try it.  They both got over 65km/h on them.

A little Scorpion that tried to interrupt our lunch at the dunes.

The "girls" on New Years Eve (Rebekka, Rachel, Monica and Gerti)

Rachel has been spending all her money on bracelets.  She's got one of the on here but usually wears about 5 at a time.  She and Shawn had a great time with the Aussie kids... learning what they have/say vs what we have/say.  Everytime I hear Shawn imitate Rebekka ("Oi MAAARTIN, You WAAANT to PLAAAY?") I crack up.

Both Craig (the Aussie Phys Ed Department Head from the Gold Coast) and I are worse for wear!

After dinner, we went down to the beach where they were having a big bonfire and party to bring in the new year.  We wandered around with about 5000 happy but peaceful party goers and Shawn set off some more of his fireworks.  By about 10:30pm, we were tired out due to the string of 5am starts we'd been doing and headed back through a pretty much vacant Swakopmund to our hostel.  We couldn't have felt safer in Barrie.  It was a great way to ring in 2012 (or at least celebrate surviving 2011).

Happy New Year!