Namibia Day 1 (February 14, 2009)

Ported in Walvis Bay, once again very industrial. Our group rented out a beach house in Swakopmund, or “German Town” as it is referred to by the locals. However, my friends Dean, Jack, Heather and I decided to spend the day in Walvis Bay, instead of heading straight for the beach house like the rest of the crew. It was a smart decision though, because we knocked an FDP (field requirement for classes) out of the way. I’ll touch on that part later. We ported in the Bay at about nine in the morning. Dean, Jack, Heather and I basically did a self tour of the city. It was very peaceful, the traffic specifically, compared to Marrakech. Everything seemed way more laid back, which was a nice change from Spain and Morocco. As soon as we left the gate, the locals had stands ready for bartering. We waited until after lunch. The place we found was pretty neat, “The Raft”, or something like that. The entire restaurant was on stilts in the ocean, with miles of beautiful beach right next to it. We all went with seafood, which could have been a tad risky but it ended up being really good, and none of us got sick -- a plus. After lunch, we bartered. I bought a great mask for about half of the man’s asking price. All of the stands were selling a lot of beautiful African woodwork, jewelry, etc. I wanted to spend more time just browsing, but I new that we would be here for quite some time more. The four of us stuffed ourselves into about two open cab seats and road back to the port. Namibian cab drivers are much more chill and reasonable that the ones in Barcelona and Marrakech. Once we got back to the ship, I took about a three minute shower and made it in time for the MICE FDP. The MICE group is a music group that makes music through computer technology and our natural environment. My Ecoacoustics class requires me to attend a few of their concerts. This was the first time I had heard the group, so I did not really know what to expect. We drove out to the middle of the desert, and after walking over a few small sand hills, we found our teacher and the rest of the MICE group alongside $10,000 of recording and sound equipment. There was a little time before the actual concert so we climbed up one of the huge sand dunes surrounding the site. The climb was absolutely exhausting, a very hard workout. The view was absolutely incredible, well worth the climb. The concert was…how do you say...interesting? I heard a number of new sounds and saw a number of new ways to actually play and make music. It was interesting; I’ll leave it at that. After the concert we climbed more dunes. Being sandy, hot, tired, and blistered, all I wanted was a cold shower and a beverage. We caught a cab to Swakopmund fo roughly four dollars a person for about a 35 minute cab ride. When we arrived at the beach house, everyone was just waking up (don’t forget it was the middle of the day though). The house was way bigger than I had expected. That night we met a few locals (3 teenage girls) that directed us to a great place for dinner. The S.A.S. girls we were with conversed and talked about American celebrity gossip with these Namibian girls, and all of the guys pretty much stayed out of the conversation, as you can probably imagine. The rest of the night, we walked around Swakopmund and experienced a little bit of the night life.