Greetings from Swakopmund, Namibia!

Chris and I are now a week into our overland truck journey to 
Victoria Falls from Cape Town. We had a blessedly pleasant few days 
in Cape Town to relax, shake off the dust from West Africa, and tour 
around the town a bit. We were happily surprised to discover that 
Cape Town is the nearest thing to home which we've encountered on the 
entire trip. It's very modern and thriving and we enjoyed wandering 
around the town, correctly billed as one of the world's most scenic, 
checking out the Waterfront (a huge American-style indoor mall, many 
separate shops and restaurants, a brewpub [sampled a tasty bitter]. 
and even a sushi bar [yum!]), downtown (Long street in THE place to 
be, with funky bars, restaurants, shops, and lots of backpacker 
hotels), and the surrounding hills. On Sunday the 14th, we went on a 
hike of around 15-20 km, leaving our hostel about 9:30, hiking up 
Signal Hill (maybe 300 m), then Lion's Head (about 600 m) where we 
had lunch, and finally up to the top of Table Mountain (just over 
1000 m). The view over the city, the port, the surrounding hills, and 
the Cape of Good Hope from the top of each hill was absolutely 
stunning, getting increasingly better as we went along.

After our traveling struggles in West Africa, we decided that we were 
in need of a long break from worrying about daily logistics. We found 
out that overland truck trips are very popular and quite economical 
(about US$25 per day, not including beverages) and decided to sign on 
to one that left last Tuesday from Cape Town. Our truck belongs to 
the company Umkulu and they've been doing a great job, feeding us 
very well and entertaining us with fun activities and great scenery. 
We worked our way up north along the Atlantic, cutting inland a bit 
and crossing into Namibia at the Orange River, where we camped out 
for two nights. We then proceeded further on into the Namib Desert, 
stopping a couple of times along the way for the evening and to hike 
in canyons and across dune fields. One canyon was particularly 
impressive, with a large fault forming a double terrace in the canyon 
walls and the hour's hike down was followed by a refreshing swim in a 
pond left in the otherwise dried up riverbed. We hiked back up to the 
rim just in time to catch the sunset. Another day, we hiked up a huge 
dune (300 or 400 m above the plain - reportedly, the Namib has some 
of the world's highest dunes) and then some of the people ran 
footraces down the face of the highest dune (I ran down first and 
videoed the event). For a sense of how high it is, at top speed, it 
took a athletic German medical student just over one minute to race 
down. Several people wiped out and that will certainly make for some 
entertaining footage on the video.

We're now back at the Atlantic coast in the town of Swakopmund, 
camping out last night just south of town on the seaside, where we 
had an amusing party last night on the dock bar involving excessive 
amounts of beer, gin, rum, tequila, and various vivid shades of spray-
on hair color (most went for combinations of yellow, red, green, and 
blue, but I had to be different, so striped my hair with white and 
face with black, in an attempt to emulate the native zebra). This 
morning, some of us opted for activities in the desert, and I chose 
to go sand boarding with the three Germans from the truck. This was 
great fun and relatively cheap ($20 for three hours, versus the $55 
quad biking for 1.5 hours or $150 sky diving for 10 minutes. It also 
made a good substitute for my usual skiing & snowboarding that I'll 
be missing out on this season.

Tomorrow, we move on toward Atosha Park, followed by Windhoek and 
then on into Botswana and eventually Victoria Falls.

Best wishes to you all,
Than Putzig & Chris Tarr