Ever gone headfirst off a 95m sand dune?!

This is going to be my longest entry yet as I didn't realise I'd left it so long from Maun. In the past ten days I've relaxed in the Olkavango Delta, entered Namibia and enjoyed seeing more wildlife at Etosha National Park and Cheetah Park, picture perfect scenery at Spitzkoppe and finally spent some time at the coastal town of Swakopmund. It's from Swakopmund that I write this, on the West coast of Namibia having completed a journey right across Affrica from the Indian Ocean waters of Dar es Salam in the last 4 weeks.

At the Olkavango Delta we enjoyed a two night sleep out in the company of local villagers. Having driven part of the way into the Delta, the only way to access our camp is via water. The villagers met us and transported us, our tents, bags and food on dug-out canoes to the camp. The delta has numerous shallow waterways that they travel in canoe, using a long pole to push off the bottom of the riverbed. The journey is very relaxing, and fortuantly no-one overturned (that time!). Once at camp we were deep into the delta and had no running water, showers or toilet... very remote! There is a lot of wildlife around, and in the mornings and late afternoon the villagers took us on walks to see some of the animals. It's a great experience to be wondering around the plains and seeing zebra, buffalo, girraffe, warthogs, honey badgers, elephants, hippos and other animals! Fortunately we didn't see a lion! In the second afternoon we were taken out on the canoes again and had a chance of 'poling' ourselves, I actually wasn't too bad but some people ended up very wet!

After leaving the delta we drove for Etosha National Park in Namibia, crossing the border. The park is very large (over 22,000 square km) and dry. In terms of animals we saw it was probably the worst we've been to on this trip with game drives having long periods without seeing anything, most of the more common animals were spotted, with the highlight being seeing a group of girrafes at a waterhole. The campsite we stayed at has a waterhole with a light on nearby, it is supposed to be full of animals some evenings but we sat up there for an hour or so and saw nothing!

Cheetah Park was the next destination of our next short drive, this is a santary in Namibia set up to look after Cheetahs that would have been killed by local farmers. Similar to foxes in the UK, Cheetahs are a huge pest and kill farmers animals so are often shot. There are some cheetahs at the park which have been hand-reared and are very tame, we got the chance to take pictures stroking these. Next, we were taken on the back of a truck which was feeding the 'wild' cheetahs donkey meat, the cheetahs all get very close and were fighting over the meat right in front of us.

Spitzkoppe is a group of rock formations in Namibia, it is one of Namibia's biggest tourist attractions and we spent a night camping alongside the rocks, great for taking pictures at sunset and sunrise, but very cold in the evening as its in the middle of the Namibian desert.

We arrived at Swakopmund on Friday morning and have been here all weekend, Swakopmund is a lovely ex-German town (Namibia was their colony untill the end of WW2), still very much dominated by German arcitecture. Its a much enjoyed relief from the past few weeks as we're all in hostels meaning I'm sleeping out of a tent for the first time in four weeks, and has some modern shops. The town has become the 'adrenaline capital' of Namibia and the most popular excursions are the 'big three ' (sky-diving, sandbording and quadbiking). About half of our group skydived over the Namib desert but I passed, claiming that I'll do it in Australia or New Zealand instead! I have completed the other two activities on the sand dunes though and both were brilliant. The quad biking is a huge adrenaline buzz, riding up and down the dunes on a 125cc bike (I started on a larger semi-automatic but had to downsize!). This morning we sandborded, basically its a snowboard with wax on the bottom which you ride down a 90m dune like a snowboard, the landing is very soft though! The ride down lasts about 30 seconds, and then you walk all the way to the top of the dune, which takes significantly longer! We also managed to do a lie-down run, in which you ride down the dune headfirst on a bendy piece of wood and hope for the best! They had a speed gun at the bottom, with most people reaching 65-70km/h. I didn't manage to get recorded because my board span so I was going backwards halfway down and I ended up in a spectacular crash with limbs and sand flying everywhere! We have a viewing of the DVD tonight, and I've got a feeling I'll be the star!

Five days till Cape Town and the end of the overland trip, I'll probably next update from there.

LK