We were lucky to have spent 2 nights in this small town (one of Namibia's biggest cities. Namibia is a huge country but only has 1.8 million citizens...thats 2 people per square km). They have some pretty good seafood and german-ish food (Schnitzel, mostly).
Yesterday was a bizarre and incredibly action packed day. The night before we had all gone out to this bar/club like thing above a action-sports booking center. I had a lot to drink (mostly I mixed too much, i had half a bottle of red wine, half of white, double shot of rum, and about 3 beers). While not that much, I woke up with my stomach feeling like crap cause of the weird mixture of juices the night before.
So, I woke up feeling iffy and went Sandboarding.We drove out to a massive dune with these huge sleds and rode them down at speeds of about 70 km/hr, which is really fast! I only wiped out once, and am still finding sand in places I didnt even know I had.
After a few hours of fun, we broke for lunch, and went back to our rest lodge. After a very quick shower, we were off to what Kait and I booked a day prior...
SKYDIVING!
I was incredibly nervous and sick all the way up to when I boarded the plane, and then all my nervousness went away. The super-nerd in me kept thinking of all the awesome movies with skydivers or major drops from high altitudes, and the various video games that included them too. This was weirdly calming, thinking that I'd be a real-life badass for a brief moment in time.
The first few seconds after jumping feels like going down a roller coaster. But very quickly I reached terminal velocity, and the free fall experience is unlike anything in the entire world. Words can't describe it, and it was simply breathtaking and amazing.
We opened the shoot (and it opened, thank god!) And glided down. My Tandem Master (the guy attached to me) gave me control of the shoot for about 2 thousand feet and I steered around the sky for a while, which was also way too wicked.
We had the option of staying in this town another night, and while 14 of 16 people here wanted to, this German couple decided it would be best to spend 2 nights (instead of 1) bush camping with no ammentities whatsoever. Its basically the allies versus the axis as we're trying to convince them to stay.
I'm off to do less deadly things now, and will be keeping both feet firmly planted on the ground for the time being.
Swakopomund Craziness (Spread My Wings and Fly Away)
Commenting on my Blog
I know people have complained that they can't comment on my blog. I think I just fixed it. Give it a shot!
My laptop died
So, my laptop died. I was uploading pictures to it on the bus, worked like a charm. I shut it down like normal, and about 15 minutes (no more) later I wanted to boot it up again.
Turns out it won't get past the BIOS. It certainly sounds like my hard drive is NOT spinning up. The only thing I did was create a partition out of unpartitioned space, making that unused and unallocated space a new drive letter (drive Z). That wouldn't have done it, would it? My bootable OS is still on the C drive partition. Anyone with thoughts or ways to help me out? Its an (I Believe) Asus 1000ha laptop with a 160 gig hard drive running 5400rpm, NOT a solid state drive. Anything I can do in the BIOS to fix? Do I have to go inside? Is my hard drive just completely dead?
So, its a desert
I've been in Namibia for a few days now, and pretty much what I've seen (and what i've been camping in) has been deserts of all kinds. Sandy, rocky, barren, deadly, cold, hot, warm, made of granite, limestone, its all been here.
This will probably be the hardest part of the trip for me as I hate extreme heat mixed with sand. Sand and dust gets everywhere, and just makes things a bit uncomfortable for me. The heat at night forces me to sleep on top of my sleeping bag, and with dust and sand, I wake up in the morning sweaty, sticky, and slighty dusty. Thats pretty much my biggest complaint, if not the only complaint.
After my last post, we went to Fish River Canyon for a sunset view of the 2nd largest canyon in the world (after the 1st, the Grand Canyon. America!). It was breathtaking, and since we were, I kid you not, the only ones there, it was that much more beautiful to not have a bunch more tourists surrounding us.
Recently we went to Soussevlei, home of the world's largest sand dunes. In the morning before sunrise we climbed one of the largest ones in the area (Dune 45, as its called) so we could see the sunrise over the countless dunes in the area. It was really pretty. The sand was exceptionally soft, and sitting on it felt really cool and comfortable. After the hard climb, running down the dune was a lot more fun and much less exhausting, and the pictures I snapped were amazing.
If I get a chance to upload pictures, I will, cause last night's camping was (really) a fun experience (and probably the only "fun" one of these kind of camp sites coming up). We went Bush Camping. We were in the middle of the desert, flat land surrounding us for miles and miles. We found this giant rock or two that had a minimal camp site set up (think rocks lining a road to designate a driving path, and nothing more). We set up our tents, and for miles and miles in every direction was rocky desert.
In the morning I woke up early (I had to water some plants, long night of drinking fake orange juice), when, on the ground next to my little plant I was watering, I noticed something. It was a leg. It was a torn off leg. It was a torn off shreded tendent leg of some cat-like creature. Clearly we weren't the only ones camping there last night...
Anyways, we are now in Swokopmund (i hope i'm spelling that correctly). Just like every other place in Africa, there are about a million KFCs and no McDonalds, which I find hilarious. Its a nice touristy town. We have some fun activities planned for tomorrow, and I'm 99% sure I'll survive them all, so hopefully you'll be getting another blog post from me soon.
Vinyards and Deserts
So, after a few hours trekking towards Namibia, we stopped at a small Vinyard (which had a campsite), and set up our tents, got out our gear, and were ready for a relaxing evening.
Luckily we had a wine tasting planned, which only cost 50 rand (7 rand to the dollar, so less than 10 bucks). They were very generous with the wine tasting, offering the group 2 whites, 3 reds, a blush, and a sparkling to sample. That amounted to at least half a bottle per person since there were 2 or so people who didn't drink. If I can actually remember... we had a Chanin Blanc, Chardonay, Pinotage, Merlot, a blush (which I can't recall the name of), a Michelle, which is a sparkling wine apparently... and their speciality which was a 17.5% alcohol red Merlot (i think), and it was all very tasty.
We turned off the lights after dinner that evening and sat out under the stars. We were no where near a town, which made for some excellent star viewing. I mean this in all sincerity, I have never in my life seen such an amazing sky. Thousands and thousands of stars were visible, as was Mars, and the milky way belt, which was incredible.
After a short sleep (6 or so hours), we set up for a super long drive through one of the hottest days I've ever experienced. It was between 45 and 47 degrees celsius, and in awesome America land, thats 113 degrees fahrenheit, and in a bus with no air conditioning, its freakin hot. I drank a good 6-7 full 32 oz camelbaks and never had to pee. yeah, it was that hot.
Right now I'm stopped at a camp site next to the Orange River with an internet cafe and a bar. Every beer is 2 bucks or less, and 2 spirits is 10 bucks (yeah, love that exchange rate).
TTFN: Ta ta for now.
Mega Shark
I went Shark Diving today
And I was the only person on the boat not to get sea sick...
In fact, I was the only person not to even feel a tad nauseous
In fact, I ate a huge steak dinner before boarding, and didn't feel a thing
Right.
Me Thinks the Lady Doth Protest To Much?
Anyways, it was an experience, thats for sure. I was put into a very, very small metal cage, submerged, and saw sharks swimming around me trying to catch the bait laid for them.
Afterwords, we drove back to Cape Town, and met up with our Intrepid group (which I will describe later, I am tired). We ate a nice game restaurant, I had Springbok Shank (i opted out of the other game meats due to my previous sickness), and it was pretty tasty.
Off to Namibia!
(Editors Note: No Limbs were harmed in the making of this post)
Table Mountain and the Quiche of Death
While we had planned on going shark diving today, Unreal Dives (which, given their current performance, I would NOT recommend), said they "never received a re-schedule" after the "inclement weather" the previous day, even though we did, which is total bullcrap. We woke up at 5am to be picked up by them, and of course, no one came. We are currently "re-scheduled" for tomorrow, lets see how that goes...
So, we were already up, and since we had planned on doing this at some point, we decided to climb Table Mountain, taking the "easy" trail. Ohhh how funny that was...
To prepare, we wanted to bring a lunch with us. We went to this little cafe, and for just over 4 bucks (or 30 rand) I bought a half-sandwich of grilled veggies, berry sauce, and goat cheese. Without a doubt, the most amazing sandwich i've had in the past month (very similar to Wisey's, for those of you in DC). Kaitlin thought it would be good to bring a Quiche on the climb to eat at the top... oh so wrong, so very very wrong. I'll get back to the Quiche later...
We took a cab to the base of the mountain (which has a cable car for those tourists who aren't feeling as adventurous, are lazy, or are clearly smarter than we were), and got out towards the easy trail. We looked up to about 1100 meters of path and rock (3000+ feet or so, I think, I'm going to grow to hate metric...).
About 300 meters up we slowly started to regret the climb (it was tough as hell!), even though we had a few people pass us (who had clearly either climbed this before or were incredibly avid hikers).
As I made my way up, I started to smell a strange sent from my backpack, the very same backpack where Kaitlin decided to stuff her Quiche... and of course, the box had sprung a small leak. Her quiche came with a salad, which was sitting in her bag My bag, now firmly scented of tasty vegetables, grew heavier with the thought of having to clean it out. Luckily, I had about 700 meters left to make fun of Kaitlin for bringing a Quiche on a mountain climb, which inspired many-a-fun joke and song.
(To the theme of The Lion Sleeps Tonight)
On the Mountain, this Mighty Mountain, Kaitlin eats a Quiche
Or even better: A salad and a quiche are sitting in a backpack. The quiche manages to squirm his way over to the salad and says "Phew, boy, it sure is hot in here!" to which the salad replies "OH MY GOD A TALKING QUICHE!"
So, after having a few bites of her delicious quiche, we continued (and finally) made our way up the mountain. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but it was so amazingly rewarding once we got the top and walked around. The views were breathtaking, and we could see everything in a nice 360 degree view.
We cable car'd it down (we were exhausted!) and took it easy the rest of the day, grabbing a small and nice italian dinner and chilling at our hostel and internet cafe.
Camps Bay, African Music, and gobs of garlic
The first full day we had in Cape Town, we woke up relatively early and started exploring the city bowl area. It was a bit chilly in the morning, but it quickly warmed up during the day.
We wandered around the city and made our way to the Gold Museum. It was a small, neat museum, with a pretty cheap entrance fee. The first exhibit in the museum was amazing. It was 3 walls full of incredibly detailed time lines of every major civilization (almost) the dawn of man, and their important accomplishments, trades, etc.
While that was my favorite room of the whole museum, the rest didn't disappoint either. Most of the remaining rooms (of maybe 4, 5) were decked out with old gold relics and old tools and clothing adorned with gold. It was pretty nice, with the final small room being completely dedicated to a small golden lion with a huuuge smiley face on it. It was several hundred years old, but still hilarious looking. Unnecessary humor, sure, but I'm just that ridiculous.
We walked to the waterfront and grabbed lunch at a Portuguese restaurant called Tasca. I grabbed the cheapest thing on the menu (a chicken burger), which was incredibly delicious, tossed with this red sauce, lettuce, tomato, and had french fries on the side. I had a draft of their house brew, and Kaitlin had a Castle.
While walking past the waterfront to Green Point (a very pretty gay district, from what I hear), we passed by the new World Cup stadium (that thing was huge!) and high-tailed it to Camps Bay, which was, without a doubt, the most gorgeous area I've been to, and one of the most gorgeous beaches in the world.
After climbing some very huge rocks and exploring the beach front, we hit a small restaurant, grabbed some small appetizers, and split a bottle of a blush wine. It was tasty and cheap, but if I was alone i would never get it. Certainly not for people who strictly enjoy reds (i wanted a full red, not a blush, but can't complain when alcohol is presented!), but it was still great. We split a small garlic bread, which ended up being a flat pizza bread with light olive oil and grilled onions with very fine garlic on the side to put on if we chose to. We also split some great bruschetto (spelling, clearly). The restaurant is apparently a world chain, Primi Piatti, with a location in Washington DC (i believe), but I've never been to it before.
We head back to our hostel, chilled, relaxed, and headed out for the night. We hit up a bar across the street with a few live guitarists playing, and relatively cheap drinks. After 3 drinks or so we went to another bar called Mama Africa, where a group was playing traditional African music, and we listened and danced for about an hour before heading home for sleep.
The more I explore this city, the more I wish I had more time here, its simply amazing.
You know what I like about South Africa?
"Why waste wine when you can get wasted!"
- Jerry, the Cape Town Wine Lands tour guide
Beer, Wine, and Spirit Review #2
Not wanting to waste any time in Cape Town (we only have a few days before our big overland trip), we went right into a Wine Tasting tour (that was very cheap!).
We went to two places. The first place we visited was Zevenwacht.
According to our guides and the hosts at the winery, the wine business in South Africa is booming, and exports are at an all time high. I'm no wine expert, and for me to pretend to know pretty much anything about wine would be ridiculously pretentious of me, so everything I'm telling you all is just how I experienced it and what I was told about the wine itself.
At Zevenwacht I tried 5 wines, 2 whites, and 3 reds. The first I tried was a 360 Degree Sauvignon Blanc. It is called a "360" because all of that grape are picked from a single patch. It was a pretty basic tasting white, but not bad at all.
The second was a Chenin Blanc, a barrel fermented wine with rich pineapple and yellow fruit flavors. It wasn't too bad. I'm not a fan of whites, but if wine is presented to me, I must drink!
The third was a Pinotage. This one was very tasty, it had aromas of chocolate and coffee with sweet red cherry flavours. It was very, very, very slightly smokey. Kaitlin said it tasted like bacon. I didnt taste that, but since bacon is the most amazing thing on earth, I wish I had.
The fourth was a Syrah, a vibrant wine with white pepper and sweet spicy floral tones of jasmine and violets. This one was so-so in my opinion. Others who were tasting it really enjoyed it, but it just wasn't for me.
The fifth was a Cabernet Sauvignon, a concentrated and full bodied wine with red cherry, blackcurrant, herbs and roasted coffee bean flavours. This was my favorite of the batch, it was very tasty, and I really enjoyed it.
The second place we ventured to was Saxenburg, a winery started in 1693, back during the time of the Dutch East India company. We tried 5 wines here too.
The first was a Savignon Blanc, a fruity wine which was enriched by gooseberry and fig flavours. It was pretty good. As was the second white wine, a Chardonnay, a full bodied wine with a lemon and hazelnut character. This was also exceptionally tasty.
The three reds we tried started with the Merlot. This wine was structured with layers of berry fruit flavors and hints of mocha chocolate. I usually like merlot, but for whatever reason this wine wasn't doing it for me.
The 4th was another Pinotage. This was my 2nd favorite wine of the day. Unlike the first wine, I actually tasted the hint of Bacon Kaitlin claimed to have tasted. WIN! It was very tasty.
My favorite wine of the whole day was our final wine, a wine which had apparently won Saxenburg a huge trophy. A 2005 Shiraz. This was incredibly, incredibly tasty and enjoyable, and if anyone could grab a bottle, I would suggest it!
Anyway, enough of me sounding pretentious and annoying, I'll probably be sticking to beer for the rest of the trip...
Party time!
The plane's too big captain!
After 12 grueling hours, we finally landed in Cape Town, and were bussed from our plane to the terminal because the aircraft was too big (and it had two entrances, which was odd, but hey, Virgin Atlantic can do their thing).
Customs was crazy easy, basically joked around with us the whole time (seriously, of course), about our visit, stamped a huge stamp into our passports, and let us go. Thats right Customs Agent, what took us so long to get here?
Our driver took us all the way to our hostel on Long Street (think the Adams Morgan of Cape Town). On the way there, we had miles of townships on both sides of the highway. Townships are the really poor and impoverished areas where the homes are built out of sheet metal, essentially. Some of the townships were really a sad sight, where you could see the homes falling into disrepair. At one point, I saw 2 boys on the side of the road, one of which was completely naked and attempting to take a massive dump. I don't think Kaitlin noticed, but not the first thing I wanted to point out to her.
The SA government had started housing projects, and from what we saw and what our driver said they had been pretty successful. We started coming to townships where real homes were being built to replace the metal ones, a 14 year old promise to the people of the townships finally coming to fruition.
As we started getting into Middle Class areas, the last townships on both sides of the highway were very unique. On our left, the muslim community, living in a relatively nice township with proper homes. On the right, the same style homes, with the exception that nearly all homes had bars over the windows and doors. Apparently, gangs controlled that neighborhood, gangs that attempted, to the best of their ability, to fully imitate the gangs of the US. Dressing the same, trying to sound the same, and listening to the same music. Quite a violent area, according to our driver.
As we passed Table Mountain, we came into the middle class to upper class areas. Everything looked much nicer and incredibly western. We made our way to Long Street, paid our driver, and checked into our hostel: Carnival Court.
London: I need sleeeep
I arrived at London on Sunday, Valentines Day, at 10am London time. Needless to say, having left at 9:30pm EST for a 7 hour flight and receiving only about an hour of sleep, I was exhausted, and pretty much passed out on the Tube on the way back to the airport that evening.
So there we were, in the middle of one of the greatest cities on earth, with an 11 hour layover before our 12+ hour flight to Cape Town. Naturally, we took the underground to the center of London and got out near Trafalgar Square.
Jack Sparrow, Mickey Mouse, Puppy Dogs, and Creepy Clowns. Yep, street performers were out in style that day. There was a man who was doing a pretty damn good impression of Jack Sparrow, a man (or woman, who knows), in the most shotty Mickey Mouse costume I have ever seen, a man dressed as a dog standing under a box so only his head and "paws" were visible to the world. I took many pictures, naturally, and the ridiculousness of those costumes will soon be uploaded for the world to see.
We grabbed lunch with an old friend of Kait's who had been studying in London, and his name was Jake. After indulging in a Steak, Guinness, and Mushroom Pie, we walked to the British Museum where we spent an hour or so looking at vases, mummies, and jewelry that looked like smiley faces! (again, pictures will be uploaded).
So, there was this mask created hundreds and hundreds of years ago, before Britain did any colonizing, that looked strangely familiar. I had never done much research into race relations and race humor, but clearly "blackface" was something that has been used to represent those with black skin for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Whether positively or negatively represented, it seems that a face far too familiar with crude racial humor was much older than I once thought.
After exhausting our time at the British Museum, we took a double-decker bus to the London Eye and walked from the Eye to Westminster, Parliament, and Big Ben. After some awesome photos it was time to head back to Heathrow to endure a crap-tastic 12-hour flight...
I need sleep.
Snowmeggedon 2010 (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blizzard)
So, I arrived to DC last Wednesday, the...3rd? I'm not too positive, but anyway, today is the 13th (which means I leave tonight!)
Last Friday saw the beginning of 25 or so inches that hit DC, and pretty much put the city to a standstill. The snowball fights were epic, even the one outside of Thurston where some passerby who's car got hit decided it would be a smart idea to pull a gun...
Anywho, the snow was pretty outrageous. I haven't uploaded any pictures yet, but when I do, those of you who aren't from the east coast or aren't there currently there will understand why DC sucks with snow...
The Federal Government was closed for 4 days. 4 ridiculous days. Kaitlin arrived to pick me up on Monday, several days after the last flake fell, and the roads weren't even close to being cleared. As I was driving up to New Jersey with her, we drove on the parkway that connects Baltimore and Washington DC (which, I assume, is one of the main roads federal employees take to get to and from work. The road conditions on that ONE ROAD were absolutely horrible.
What makes it worse, is that EVERY OTHER ROAD IN MARYLAND WAS PLOWED TO PERFECTION. 4 days of paid vacation for federal employees, thats all it was. Seeing that ONE SINGLE HIGHWAY not plowed and seeing that the rest were completely cleared was the biggest load of crap I've seen in a long time. It was abundantly clear to me that federal employees simply wanted to skip work, and that this one major road simply wouldn't get plowed to ensure a few paid vacation days. What were they thinking?
So, here I am in the wonderful state of New Jersey. I'm in central Jersey, which has proven to be beautiful in both summer and winter. The 3 feet of snow on the ground here still looks amazing with the surrounding woods, and having seen snow on the beach for the first time on my life, it really is pretty up here. Can't say the same to industrialized Jersey to the far north and far south, but I hope that those areas don't put people off, New Jersey really is something of an awesome state. And this is coming from me, a midwesterner, a Missourian!
It could just be that I love the east coast...
I leave in less than 12 hours. I am so excited! 7 hours to London, 11 hour layover, and then 14 hours to Cape Town.
Will update soon! Hope I have some readers!
Beer, Wine, and Spirit Review #1!
Hey everyone,
So, on my journey through Washington DC, I ended up going to a bar by the name of "Churchkey" in DC. It has 50 or so beers on tap, and pretty much all of them I had never heard of before. So, naturally, I had to give as many of them a try.
I was there for Mr. Belleville's birthday, and it was great, wish him all the best on his 22nd year circling the sun on this mess we call home... ANYWAYS, back to delicious frothy business.
Now, the names of the beers I tried were crazy hard to remember, so I wrote them down, and took pictures (er, at least tried. Camera phone, you see)!
In no particular order:
- Abbaye De Floreffe Double - this was a fairly dark belgium brew, I would say a bit "spicy", but describing a beer like that sounds very fluffy and pretentious, don't you think?
- Allagash White - this was a belgium white, and was probably my favorite drink of the night (my second favorite would compliment any "Explosion" I would desire to make in the future...)
- Old Horizontal 2008 - this was kind of malty and had fruity hints in it. Now, my taste buds may not be the greatest in the land, but I thought i got the hint of fig and other fruits.
- Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Marzen - THE GOD OF ALL BEERS. This beer not only smells like bacon, but it tastes smokey, and let me tell you, if you are a bacon fanatic, the scent of this beer will send you into a tailspin, its crazy awesome.
- Petrus Oud Bruin - Apparently there are many "Petrus" beers, this one sits and brews for a long time until it becomes a bit sour. It certainly had a small "sour" taste to it, but it was also very tasty
On the left, the Petrus, the right, Old Horizontal 2008 and the BACON BREW.
Washington DC
Just got to DC. Weather here ain't too bad. Its very crisp and cool, and snow from their past storm is melting so the ground is all wet.
I beat the Lion King
As I still wait to leave...