Cape Town to Swakopmund, Namibia

After almost a week of traveling north from Cape Town, we've finally made it Swakopmund, Namibia. I see the comments asking for posts, so I apologize, but this is the first I've been able to get on the computer since Cape Town. I admit, I was a little surpised I didn't get stopped at the Namibian border to take an urgent phone call from a worried mother, and even more surprised when we got here that my picture wasn't plastered all over CNN and a "Save Todd" ribbon campaign under way.

The tour is going great so far. On Tuesday I checked into the hotel we were supposed to meet at and joined an afternoon tour of the Cape of Good Hope. We drove down to the cape and stopped at a penguin colony on the way. As soon as we got back we had our orientation meeting for my main tour.

In all, there's 18 people and two guides with us. We have 10 Americans, 3 Canucks, 2 Aussies, 1 Belgian, a Swede and a very talkative Englishman named Steve. The guides are both from Zimbabwe. Everyone is really great and we're having a blast.

After we left Cape Town, we drove north and camped at an orange farm. In the afternoon, we did a guided hike through the mountains and learned about the nature there. It was pretty interesting to learn about a lot of it, but just be warned if you're here, they have a species of ant that they refer to as the "ball biters." Apparently if they get on you that's their preferred point of attack.

From there we drove into Namibia and camped along the Gariep River, which separates South Africa and Namibia. In the morning we took a canoe trip along the river. In the afternoon, we drove north to the Fish River Canyon to watch the sunset over the canyon rim. It was a really awesome night, but the canyon wasn't as impressive as I had hoped. An interesting thing happened at night though as we were woken up by a large Kudu roaming through our campsite. A kudu is a large antelope with huge, spiraling horns. We also saw baboons at the camp, but they don't go out at night. I have a really funny story about baboons, but not enough time right now to tell it. We'll save that for later.

After that, we left for a place called Sesriem, to set up for our early morning visit to the highest sand dunes in the world, the Sossusvlei. The dunes were the main reason I wanted to visit Namibia and they were incredible. The highest one tops out at over 1500' high. Most of my group climbed a fairly high one to watch the sunrise, but I took the opportunity to take some photos from the ground. Later on, we did another guided hike to learn about the desert and the bushmen that lived there.

When that was over, we cooked lunch and drove part of the way here and camped. This morning, we got an early start and roared into town just before lunchtime. Everybody here was really looking forward to getting here as we haven't been in the same place twice yet and we finally have a chance to not sleep in our tents, which haven't been that bad, but we're covered with dust. On the drive up, we talked about what we most wanted to do, and laundry was on everyone's list.

We do have a bunch of activites to choose from here and later on today, most of us are taking a two hour quad bike drive through the sand dunes here. They call them quad bikes, but their just 4-wheel ATVs. Tomorrow will be a big day and I've got one huge activity planned, but I'll keep you all in suspense for that one.

All in all, we're having an awesome time over here. The group is great and we're getting along really well, plus the alcohol is absolutely flowing. I'll write more tomorrow after our quad biking and yet to be announced activity take place.

On some random notes:
- A very happy, but belated 30th birthday to Julie Thomason, I hope you all had fun in Florida. - Opie, you will get your wish, not because I feel like bringing you a baby rhino, but more out of spite for Danielle.
- Danielle, I know you're jealous, but we all know it's not for the brother reason.
- Robyn, how crazy did our mothers get? Are they allowed back in Nevada?