This morning we got to sleep in until checkout of Amanpuri at 10 since we only had a drive of 150 kilometers. I actually woke up naturally at around 8:30am and popped off to the breakfast café. Apparently included in our accommodations was hot breakfast, so I ordered scrambled eggs with cheese and “very cooked” bacon.
So. Effing. Good.
I happily munched my breakfast while getting in some blogging and work, and then when Silia and Amberlee woke up, the three of us headed out on a bunch of errands. We needed to pick up my skydiving t-shirt, get Silia’s and my videos and pictures from sandboarding, get postcards and stamps for Amberlee and myself and FINALLY hopefully get to an MTC store to get my Namibian SIM card fixed. And, en-route, we also decided on a stop to Pick ‘n Pay for snacks and cold drinks.
Somehow, we managed to do EVERYTHING, including getting my phone fixed (somehow my 4G was turned off and they wouldn’t explain to me how they turned it back on…I asked how to fix it if it happened again, and the response was, “oh well just come back here and we’ll fix it again.” #Africa
The three of us were actually the first ones back to Amanpuri for lunch, so we helped Maja prep and then had one of our typical sandwich lunches… and three new team members who were joining us at Swakopmund showed up! Two German girls who are friends previously (Lena and Johanna), and a Canadian guy (Kris) are all joining the tour from now until Livingstone. More on them later!
Once everyone came back and had lunch, we headed off for Spitzkoppe. The drive was uneventful except for the fact that Mara’s repaired window lasted about 10 minutes before falling out again!
Somehow though, this time, Amaury caught it. I frankly can’t explain that, but somehow his black magic skills were revealed. Masai ended up taping the entire window back up AGAIN and again, we were off.
When we arrived at Spitzkoppe, our local Bushman guide was already waiting for us, so we had time for a super quick toilet break and then the guide took us on a tour through the camping area to show us the Bushman paintings. He was incredibly knowledgeable about the local area and gave us a ton of history about the paintings, how they were created, and actually shared with us that this particular area and its significant paintings were only discovered about 50 years ago, so they’re relatively “new” in the grand scheme of African historic sights. What really struck me was that these paintings were made with a mix that included Ochre, which is also what the aboriginal people in Australia used in the Uluru area for their paintings.
The guide also walked us through some foliage and talked to us about useful and also dangerous plants, and then dropped us off at a huge hiking rock and recommended that we scale it to watch sunset from the top.
We figured… why not, right? So we made our way up, watched sunset, and reversed the entire process in time for dinner.
This campsite had literally no accommodations other than a drop toilet, so we had no power or showers, so it was a pretty low key but also epic night. The stars were beautiful, and a few of us stayed up talking until almost midnight, which is pretty out of character for us. We ended up covering quite a few topics, I including a lot of personal stories (snaps to Jane for our weirdly in-sync lives) all the way through to what happens when you die and how you console friends and family when they lose a loved one.
It’s talks like that night that make me so thankful for The Perfect Ten (plus Three now). These people are all so different, come from different places with different families, and yet we’re all so similar in the ways that really matter. We all care about the world and people around us, pretty much to a fault, above all else. I’m so thankful for everyone and their willingness to share their lives and their stories with each other, and kind of just giving ME a chance to reflect on things in my own life and what (and who) matters to me, and why. Couldn’t do it without y’all.
