3 days in one place – wow!

We worked out that Swakopmund was the first place we had stayed for 3 nights. Everywhere else had only been 1 or 2, so this was big for us. It ended up being the only place we stayed in for three nights during our entire visit to Namibia. I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing at all, but it is impressive to show you how often we are moving, and are almost constantly on the go. To be honest, I never thought 3 days at one spot could seem nearly too long, but we are getting so good at settling in, relaxing, sorting shit out, doing some touristy stuff and heading off again that when we have any spare time after that we kind of get a little lost, and don’t really know what to do. Plus we all like to keep busy and keep on schedule so moving on always seems to be the appropriate thing to do next.

On the other hand, you may think 6 months seems like a long and luxurious time to do this trip, but really when we break it down to every country and the almost daily distance goals, it is only just enough.

Since we had a whopping 3 nights in the very german Swakopmund, Fiver, Stuart and I managed to get a lot of ‘stuff’ done – went to the movies where they handwrite your ticket and let you choose your seat from a laminated seating plan, (Angels and demons, terribly trashy don’t do it!). We dined out German style - I think I managed to fumble out three terribly pronounced words; “bitte, danke and…ja”, how shocking. We also finally found awesome travel mugs, squeezed in a morning jog, and sent some excess baggage to Germany. A near 30kg parcel to be precise, which has made packing the car an absolute dream compared to our old, vacuum packed, every cubic cm utilised, ways. This also meant my hair could now start growing again. Just the slight whisper of the words ‘pack’, ‘unload’, ‘find’ or ‘store’ were enough to send any one of our blood pressure levels soaring. All fixed now though, good work at the post office Five and Stuart!

We also sourced some Internet access during our stay in the bustling wee town. We located an internet café the day we arrived, scoped it out and then swooped for the kill the next day. For the following two days we absolutely bombarded the café’s bandwidth. Six hands typing frantically, posting blogs, emailing family/friends and uploading pictures.

I was completely unorganised and was more the frantic typist than anything else. I hadn’t completed a single blog let alone had any photos sorted to upload yet. Shit it was so stressful, I don’t think I breathed for at least an hour and was absolutely spent afterwards. I hope I’ll be ready next time, no promises though.

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Gosh it was such a scene. I chuckle so much when I think back on it now. You can just picture 3 wired campers’ with scruffy hair, looking like something straight out of a tragic camping article, except we were all hovering over our different generation apple laptops, squinting anxiously at the screens for connection confirmation, and were oh so crammed onto one miniscule table (even though neighbouring tables were free). Backpacks were exploding with fire-wire, USB cables, external drives and cameras. Desperate power supplies were tangled all around us like hungry house pets, sucking the power from the café’s only available ‘cambrook’ whilst utilising every second of internet bliss till the bitter sweet, ‘timed out’ end.

It was the birth of the ‘Mac Squad’. Internet café’s of Africa beware!