New Years

Sadly James had to fly back to Cape Town on the 1st January 2014 so we spent a few days together in Windhoek before he left. We decided to treat ourselves and so we stayed in the Hilton (whoo!) Which I must confess was absolutely amazing. It was also quite hilarious watching the disbelieving faces of the people behind the desks as two teenagers who admittedly looked a bit like tramps (we had just been sat in the back of a boiling hot truck for 5 hours) walked in and got upgraded to the executive suite! :O

So we spent a few days in Windhoek, wandering around the city and basically just enjoying our last few days together. I was even finally able to take James to Joe's beer house for New Years Eve :) Although sadly we weren't able to go to the fancy party on the roof as the tickets had all been bought. Oh well, we still had an amazing time :)

Colour Festival!

You get a plastic bag full of this powder!

When we had first got to Windhoek, a guy I met in a club, Adriaan, told me about the Swakop colour festival. Since it was being held on the 28th of December I initially hadn't given it much thought, but due to our change of plans it now seemed like a very good idea. After finally managing to find one of the stores that sold the tickets, and after standing in a queue for over two and a half hours (we weren't the only ones to think of this) we finally had the tickets for everyone.

Before colour!

The dress code said all white so there was some frantic shopping going on the day before the festival - it was quite amusing watching everyone in town suddenly just buying white! The day of the festival James and I met up with the others for lunch. They however, then decided to go back to their hostel for an afternoon nap, but James and I were keen to go straight to the festival. After all, there's not much point paying to throw colourful paint at each other unless it's light enough to see!

After once again queuing for ages we finally managed to get in. We were slightly confused for a few minutes until someone explained how things worked. First you had to exchange money for tokens, as the stall selling the bags of colourful powder didn't except money. Then, once we had the tokens we could finally buy some colour. unfortunately by the time we arrived all the pink and purple colour had been used up, leaving green, blue and yellow.



Admittedly, James and I weren't particularly interested in the music as to be honest, it wasn't that great. But that didn't matter as we were far more interested in bombarding each other with colour - two competitive natures + a battle like environment = a LOT of colour! By the time the others rocked up at the festival we were both completely green - an unfortunate result of the colour choice available. Quite a lot of people actually stopped us and asked for pictures, since we were literally covered from head to foot in colour (in my opinion everyone else was just being pansies about it!).

It was an absolutely amazing day and so much fun. I'm definitely going to try to find more colour festivals to attend in the future!

Change of plans!

Since we could no longer go to Cape Town for Christmas, we had to come up with a different plan. We decided (after much discussion) that we would simply go back up to Swakop. After all, there was the beach, nice restaurants, shops, activities and it wasn't too expensive. So the others all travelled up. However I had to stay in Windhoek for another day, waiting for my boyfriend James to arrive (the poor guy had had to book an emergency flight to Namibia, and thus the amazing hotel room he had booked in Cape Town was going to remain empty).

It was truly amazing seeing him though, and the next day we travelled up to Swakop. We spent time at the beach - although the water was VERY cold! We went to Napolitano which was an amazing Italian restaurant in the middle of town that everyone recommended. We managed to find this incredible little market where James was quickly introduced to Namibian styled selling - where they walk after you tying to convince you to look at the things they're selling (it gets very annoying, very quickly).

The morning of Christmas day was spent opening presents and relaxing in the hostel. We were staying at the Skeleton Beach Backpackers once again, and the lady in charge was truly so lovely. She gave me a massive hug when she saw me and announced that she had an idea, since it was Christmas why didn't everybody cook their food and then eat it together, sharing if they wanted to. It was a lovely idea (although one that didn't actually happen in the end).

We met up with the others on the beach and spent some time there, chatting and laughing. While in Tses, Daisy and I had made bracelets for everybody which thankfully they seemed to like. Due to the fact that there were no stockings available I had to give Daisy her present in one of my socks (clean, I assure you). I must admit, I was very relieved that she liked the presents that I had bought for her! She in turn bought me a massive cuddly toy turtle - I personally think she just wanted to laugh at my struggles to fit it in my bag!


In the evening James and I cooked ourselves a Christmas Dinner. We had fried chicken, with onions and peppers, smothered in a lovely chilli sauce (admittedly which came out of a bottle) and coca cola. Perhaps not the most traditional of dishes, but it was delicious nonetheless. Probably because I didn't let James anywhere near the cooking - he has a tendency to burn things. Even bacon!

We even had some evening entertainment - which came in the form of the massive group of people from Botswana, who were managing to annoy everybody else in the hostel. Even the owner, who came over to chat to us and just ended up ranting about her 'irritating guests'.

We both got phone calls from out families, and I was delighted to be passed around the dinner table. It was a request I had made before I had even left. Last year, when I was at home for Christmas, my cousin had been deployed to Afghanistan for Christmas. With some brilliant timing he had called at the exact moment we had all finished eating. After we had all spoken to him we joked that this time next year it would be me phoning home!

Although it wasn't the most....normal of Christmas's it was really fun, and certainly one that I will always remember. But at the same time, I'm already looking forward to a normal, family Christmas spent at home. Especially now, since my Mother has promised that she'll buy extra of all my favourite food, to make up for me missing out this year! A promise that I am definitely going to remind her of when it gets closer to the time :)

Visa Issues

When we first came to Namibia we had to lie to get into the country. We had to say that we were simply tourists, and could not mention anything about volunteering or Project Trust. We were all able to get our three month tourism visas....which expired at the beginning of December.

When we first got to Windhoek we saw our in-country rep and gave him our passports. We explained that we needed our visas ASAP as we were planning on going to Botswana. We didn't get them in time. So we couldn't go to Botswana. From there our plans changed quite a lot.

First we planned to go to one of the other girls projects, however it turned out that we couldn't go there as her host was on holiday and she didn't have the key. Then we planned on going to the boys project, spending a few days with their host and a few days at a farm where we had all been invited. Yet that couldn't happen either, as by a bad coincidence both families were away on holiday. So we decided just to stay in Swakop for a bit longer, enjoying the beach!

A couple of days before we were going to leave for Cape Town we travelled down to Windhoek. However, we soon found out from some of the other volunteers that all of our paperwork had in fact, been lost. So the next couple of days were spent frantically calling our in-county rep and hoping that the situation would get sorted out.

It didn't. A couple of hours before we were meant to be leaving for Cape Town we got the news, we would not be getting our visas. We couldn't leave the country.

Camel riding

The day before we left Swakop, Daisy and I decided that we should do another activity. So we decided to go camel riding! We had some luck for once s our guide was really sweet and took us for a one hour walk instead of the half an hour that we had actually paid for :D







Typically we both got given quite naughty camels, who often refused to walk in  straight line and kept on wanting to stop for something to eat!

Riding a camel was certainly an interesting experience, although I must confess that it wasn't the most comfortable of things (I was very bruised the next day!) Although as Daisy smugly pointed out, she had had a very comfortable seat and so didn't share my pain!





It was also rather nerve wracking when our guide started taking us up and down sand dunes. As you went up, it felt as though you were about to slide backwards off the camel. As you went down the sand dune it honesty felt like you were going to fall off face first at any second! (thankfully we stayed firmly in the saddles for the whole journey)




As our guide led us further and further away from the town, we were soon surrounded by the desert. At one point we were both slightly concerned that we were lost, as we hadn't seen any sign of civilisation for quite a long time. But thankfully our guide obviously knew exactly where he was going.






 He was also kind enough to take some photos for us - so Daisy and I were finally able to get some photos of us together (a very rare occurrence!)









 It was a lovely way to explore the desert around Swakop, and a brilliant way to waste some time together :)

Dolpin Cruise

I realise that my posts about the Christmas holidays so far have been mainly text with very few pictures. I do apologise but quite simply, we didn't really take many photos. But hopefully this post will make up for it!

One day we went on a dolphin cruise. It was about five hours long and we saw pelicans, dolphins, seals and we were taken to go see the seal colony. It was absolutely adorable seeing the tiny balls of fluff that were the seal pups, although I was kicking myself for not taking along my big lens so that I could have taken photos of them! Although I still did manage to take some good photos :D

The dolphin cruise truly was incredible - and something I would definitely recommend to anybody who's ever in Namibia. We phoned the guy up the evening before and in the morning they came and picked us up in the Kombi to take us to Walvis Bay.







Before the cruise we all had the chance to browse through the little shops that lined the water, so Katie and I took the opportunity to browse through the most amazing little jewellery shop. There were even some traditional Himba women selling their jewellery which was quite an amazing thing to see.






At the front of the boat there was a little section almost like a trampoline where we made our base for the day. It was amazing to sit at the very edge of the boat, just watching the Bay go by.








First the crew managed to get some pelicans to come over to the boat. It was incredible seeing them up close - although I must confess I was a little nervous when one of the guys starting throwing them the fish directly above my head!!!









We then had a visit from some seals which I personally loved. They've trained  few of the seals from the bay to come aboard the boats and let people stroke them. Although the crew did remind us that they're still wild animals.










One woman got the shock of her life when the seal actually jumped onto her lap and then refused to get off! Still, it gave everybody else on the boat a good chance to get close to the adorable creature and give him a stroke.




Unfortunately not everybody shared my love of these cute little animals. She who shall not be named (*cough* Daisy Holmes) suddenly announced that she hates seals and so she sat as far away from the seal as she possibly could. If anyone was ever looking for evidence that animals are psychic, this would be a pretty good example to look at.
 The seal waddled the entire way around the boat until he came face to face with Daisy! I'm not sure who was more shocked - Daisy, or the seal! Unsurprisingly I was in hysterics about the whole situation, especially at Daisy's face when the seal started coming towards her :)

Once we had visited the seal colony - which I must confess did not have a particularly...nice aroma, we set off to find some dolphins. It took us a while and I think that everybody was beginning to despair, but then finally two appeared :)

The captain seemed told us that the dolphins are attracted by the motion of the engines. Apparently it's very similar to the vibrations that dolphin give out when they want to mate, and so understandably they feel drawn to it. He also informed us that dolphins are the only other animal apart from humans that have sex for fun - a fact that he seemed to find most amusing.

 It was amazing watching the dolphins have so much fun in the surf behind the boat. I think I found it especially incredible since dolphins have always been one of my favourite animals, and for years I wanted to work with them.







 
 
I spent most of the time attempting to get a good photo of them, which was actually far more difficult than you might think. I was absolutely kicking myself at one point for missing the opportunity to take a photo of one of the dolphins leaping in the air. Although I suppose it was just as amazing watching it properly :)

 




 It was an absolutely incredible day, and it's definitely one of my favourite memories so far. Definitely something that I would do again if I ever I got the chance!

Swakopmund adventures :)

I confess I didn't take this photo - but I wanted everyone to see Swakop beach!

Swakop is a beach town and so for a few days we enjoyed the luxury of just lying on a beach and swimming in the sea. One day there were wild dolphins and so Ben and I swam out until we were only a few meters away from them which was incredible. On the swim out to the dolphins we met an American, an Australian and a Canadian (sounds like the beginning of a bad joke!) and I couldn't help but laugh at their shocked reaction when they realised that a girl had managed to swim so far out :O

Of course the inevitable happened and we all got burnt. Particularly me, who is often referred to by our kids as the 'white, white, white, white, WHITE' volunteer! Inevitably there was a couple of days of pain, although thankfully it did teach all of us a lesson. I think the problem was that in Tses its simply too hot to stand in the sun, it has already become a habit for Daisy and I to seek shade whenever we can. But Swakop is COLD, and windy, so I suppose naively we forgot that the sun was just as hot as it always is. Lesson learnt!

While we were in Swakopmund the others went quad biking (I decided not to go since I had been burnt on the back of my legs and therefore felt the pain was not quite worth the pain) but the next day I did go sand boarding which was a brilliant experience.

There are two types, lying down - where you literally hold onto a rectangular piece of wood and slide down a sand dune until you stop (or crash) and the standing  up type, which is almost exactly the same as snowboarding. The others all decided to do the lying down type, but I couldn't resist standing up! It was a great day although I must confess that the company's decision to make us walk up the sand dunes instead of quad biking up soon seemed like a very stupid idea!!!! (The company aims to leave as little an impact on the environment as they can, so I suppose I can see the logic behind the decision).

As I soon realised, sand boarding and snowboarding are not as similar as you might think. If you go slowly when sand boarding, you quickly begin to sink underneath the sand. And if you attempt to turn when not going quickly then it is almost impossible. However, saying this to someone who has only snowboarded for a couple of weeks a few years ago was not going to make much of a difference! I managed fine as long as I wasn't trying to turn! It was then that the problems started (problems such as falling over, covering myself in sand and also somehow managing to do a back flip in the process!)

There was an absolutely adorable moment though, when Halo, the three year old daughter of one of the instructors decided to help me wax my board. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the board doesn't need to be waxed four times in a row, and so just sat there waiting until the adorable little girl had decided that her work was finished and wandered off to find her dad. So cute!


The day's excitement didn't end there though. As we were getting into the kombi to go home the door fell off! Their attempts to fix it failed and so for the whole of the journey home Ben had to hold the door shut - gottta love Namibian health and safety! In a way, it truly is refreshing :)  And of course, as you can imagine, the shower was VERY sandy once we all got back to the hostel!

 

Swakopmund - the first time!

So finally we travelled up to Swakopmund - which from now on shall simply be referred to as Swakop :) It was certainly an interesting drive up, five and a half hours in a kombi with three people with hangovers - probably not the best plan. And typically the door wouldn't open once we were all inside, and so to get out we literally had to climb through the windows - gotta love health and safety!

Once we arrived the kombi driver kindly dropped us off at our hostel. Which turned out not to be our hostel and was in fact just a random building that he had found. Great. And so we had to try to find our hostel...with no map, no directions, no taxi and no idea where it actually was! Thankfully Katie, one of the other volunteers, was already there and she was able to eventually find us so that she could show us where we were meant to be going.




Due to the fact that Daisy was so lightheaded she thought she was about to fall over, I took charge of our bags. I was even able to find her a trolly so that she was able to wheel our stuff along (and had something to hold her upright) the effect was suitably hobo like!

The hostel we were staying at was genuinely lovely. The lady in charge was a fantastic lady from South Africa who had moved to Namibia with her husband and son to set up a couple of hostels. The place truly felt like a home rather than a hotel, and it was lovely chilling on the sofas in the evening with everyone who was staying there, chatting, watching TV, swapping stories and playing cards. If anyone ever wants a hostel in Swakopmund, you should definitely look up the Skelton Beach Backpackers!

The last of Windhoek - for now!

Finally the boys arrived. After the James incident I think both Daisy and I were pleased to have some more people around! We chilled with the boys for a couple of days in Windhoek which was nice. We went to Joe's Diner - the famous restaurant where I had a delicious Zebra steak once again :) One evening when we went out Ben was very brave and tried a 'Brazilian Breast Milk Cocktail' due to the fact that it looked like  a milkshake we quickly concluded that it did actually have breast milk in it......nice!











Our original plan for the holidays was to travel up to a town called Swakopmund and stay there for about a week, enjoying the beach. We would then travel to the boys project and spend a day or two there, before travelling into Botswana for around a week. We would then travel back to Windhoek before heading down South to Keetmans (our local town)  to get the Inter-Cape - an over-night bus, to Cape Town, where we would spend Christmas and New Years. How naïve!

The evening before we travelled up to Swakop a guy at the hostel persuaded us to go out to a club that he knew. So off we went. It actually turned out to be quite a nice play. Love was in the air for everybody else so I spent most of the evening chatting with a hilarious guy called Adriaan who decided that since I was English I should be able to teach him how to ballroom dance - unsurprisingly, it didn't end well!

He told me all about a colour festival that was going to be held in  Swakop on the 28th December. Literally a music festival where people spend their time throwing coloured paint all over each other.  Sadly I had to tell him that we wouldn't be able to go because we would be in Cape Town then. Still he told me that I should definitely try to go  - something that I thankfully kept in mind as the holiday progressed.

At the end of the evening Adriaan gave me a cute beaded bracelet which he declared I must have so 'that I would always remember him, and my amazing African experience!' It turned out to be a very good way to end our time in Windhoek, and my meeting with Adriaan definitely worked out to our advantage!

Windhoek continued

Daisy and I were on our own in Windhoek for almost a week. We were meeting up with some of the others to travel and Windhoek was the logical place to meet. Daisy and I spent time relaxing in the pool - which seemed like complete luxury to us, reading, playing games of pool, catching up on sleep, chatting to other people staying in the hostel.

We met a hilarious old man from England who was staying at the hostel with his young Namibian wife. He was moaning (in an amused way) about how she wanted another pair of shoes, despite her proudly informing us that she already had over two hundred pairs of high heels alone - Daisy's idea of heaven!

We explored Windhoek, and went to the indoor craft market that everybody kept on telling us about. It was truly incredible, three floors covered with lots of little stalls selling traditional African objects and crafts. Daisy  and I attempted to do the sensible thing of going around all the stalls once to compare prices and see what we liked, but of course there was simply way too much that we wanted! We've both decided that we'll go back there when we're about to go home to England, and spend all of our left over money buying things :)

Unfortunately our attempts to avoid James the American didn't go as smoothly as we would have liked! One evening we got chatting to this hilarious girl, standing in the kitchen we were soon all in hysterics. At 10 o'clock she excused herself, since she had a Skype date with a friend. The next morning Daisy went ahead of me to see if the computer was free (free internet - brilliant system!). A minute later I followed and found a very strange sight.

James the American was stood up glaring at Daisy, who was stood at the other side of the room looking close to tears. Three men stood in-between them looking very angry. It was the moment when, if I was in a movie, I would have said '...I've missed something haven't I!'

Turned out that as Daisy walked past James he muttered something about her. The conversation went something like this:
Daisy: Sorry, did you say something?
James: You were disturbing everyone last night
Daisy: Um...i'm not sure that that was me
James: Yes you and the other girl with the long hair. You kept everyone awake all last night, making noise in the kitchen
Daisy: Oh, that definitely wasn't us because we went to bed at 10
James: Are you calling me a liar? Because I would kill a man for calling me a liar.

At that point James stood up and starting walking towards Daisy. Nicely enough three guys jumped in between the two of them - I assume to protect her if the idiot tried anything. And then I walked in! As always my timing is superb :P

 Sitting outside Daisy and I discussed how she had managed to get a death threat already and we weren't even a week through our holidays! Nicely enough though, over the next couple of days lots of people - both men and women, came up to us saying that they wouldn't let James do anything, that he was an idiot (although they tended to use more colourful language than that!) and that everybody hated him anyway. It was nice to feel like we had some support for once!

Our first few days in Windheok - we made an enemy :)

Well, Windhoek was certainly not boring it has to be said. Daisy and I managed to find a KFC (the next best thing after McDonalds and the only real fast food option) although I quickly remembered why I don't actually like eating there. We went to the Mall and did some shopping, and we even managed to track down a cinema and go to watch a movie :)

We also managed to make a rather scary enemy. Yay for us! The first night in the hostel we were put in a four bed room. The other two beds were occupied but when we went to sleep there was still no sign of our room mates. Then at three o'clock in the morning our bedroom door was kicked open rather violently!

 Now, when we went to sleep Daisy and I were rather cold. Tses is one of the hottest places in the whole of Namibia, and in comparison Windhoek was quite simply, cold. Since we had a fan in the room we decided to close the windows. It was also the logical thing to do as whenever Daisy gets bitten by a mosquito she gets a reaction and the bite swells up.

When the door was kicked open we both woke up, rather shocked. It was too dark to see the guy properly but we could both tell that it was a tall man. Who was angry. Very angry. He started having a massive drunk rant - most of which is too vile to write. But it went along the lines of 'who the **** closed the windows? what ******* right do you have to do that? Don't you dare close these ******* windows every again.'

At this point I must confess that I just lay there in shock, not quite believing what the guy was saying. In an attempt to calm the guy down Daisy said (in a very calm and apologetic tone) 'oh i'm sorry. It's just that we're both cold and I get really bad reactions to mosquito bites so we decided to close the window.' Well the guy was not happy with this. 'I don't ******* care if you get reactions. I've been here for three ******* months, who the **** do you think you are? The bugs can ******* eat you alive for all I ******* care.' And then he stormed out of the room.

Well Daisy and I quickly agreed that the guy was a bloody lunatic and that tomorrow morning we would have to ask to be moved. However, after half an hour the guy still hadn't returned so I decided to shut the windows again. Bad move. 'HOW DARE YOU ******* SHUT THESE WINDOWS? I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU DO IT AGIN I WILL MAKE YOU SORRY YOU LITTLE *****' Delightful.

At that point Daisy and I both left the room. We decided to go find a security guard and ask him if we should be fearing for our lives. We were quickly informed that it was James the American, a guy who everybody hated and complained about. But that no, he probably wouldn't murder us in our sleep. Still, the next morning we quickly moved into the 10 bed dorm where we hoped we would be able to avoid our new friend!