So onto the next day! Alicia and I awake at the tender hour of 7:15 am and make the long walk over to the gas station to catch a taxi. On the way she fills me in on the madness of the previous night.
We catch a taxi to the hostel to meet up with Tessa, Nancy and Katherine. All of us kick around and eat breakfast until a car comes to pick us up to take us to our next adventure, which is…get ready for it Mom... SKYDIVING!!!!!!
When we climbed into that van that’s when it first really hit us…holy s***, I am heading to an airport to jump out of a plane right now. We drove out to this middle of nowhere place. The “airport”is basically a big dirt area with a couple of buildings. They run their skydiving out of a pub. No big deal. But I did see a sign that said “No drinking and skydiving.”We paid and signed our lives away, then got a literally five minute training segment. Five minutes to jump out of a plane. Insanity. But that’s all we needed. We put on our jump suits and headed to the jump site! In our group were Nancy, Tessa, Katherine, McKenzie, Maverick, this Canadian guy named John, and this South Korean guy named Kang. Kang had never skydived before and could barely speak English! But the girls met him at the hostel and he just asked to join us. Isn’t he crazy? John was a really nice guy, him and his friends were finishing up a three week tour of African countries, he showed us a pretty sweet video of lions having sex. Maybe I’ll get to see the miracle of life in action in the wild of Africa!
So the drive to the jump site is funny because we are REALLY in the middle of nowhere now. I can’t see a single thing but desert, and we are pretty much four wheeling it. We were like…and this is the drive to our death. When we finally get there, “there”is two shacks and a shaded area. And a firepit. That’s it. This is where the airplane will come in and take off and where we will land from our jumps. We all sit around anxiously waiting for the plane to get there. We had all decided to get a video of our jumps, so for each jumper two more workers were needed, one cameraman who jumps out right before us, and one tandem jumper who is strapped onto our backs. So each plane load could take two jumpers. They chose who went with who. Katherine ended up going first. We heard her screams from hundreds of feet in the air! She came down and was totally elated, and it just made us more excited. Each plane ride took about 25 minutes. Finally it was my turn! And I just happened to be going up with Kang. Hahaha.
My jumping partner was named Mias and he was a very touchy feely guy, but my life was in his hands and I trusted him. I kind of had to. He was really nice though. The plane was very small and the door was open the whole time. We were all crammed in, by the time I was getting ready to jump out my feet were pretty asleep. The view was beautiful and I just tried to take it all in, I really wasn’t even that nervous surprisingly, just excited and anticipatory. So finally, he tells me to get ready. I shuffle up by the door and he straps onto me and puts on my goggles for me. This was the insane part. The cameraman hangs out of the door, then Mias put his right leg out the door, and I did the same. Then I put my left knee just on the edge, sitting on my left foot. Then I was looking outside of the plane! And the next thing I knew, Mias leaned back, then pushed out, and I was falling! Flying! The wind in my face! I let my arms and legs go and just felt the rush. It was amazing and something I have never felt before. We fell for a very long 35 seconds before he pulled the parachute. That was actually a really scary part too because it feels as though you’re being released rather than pulled up. From that point on, it was all coasting. Mias gave me the reins and let me turn us in fast circles all the way down. And then we landed, and all was well in the world!
Everyone had a blast, there was one mishap though, but thankfully nothing too serious. Alicia’s first chute was all twisted up, and her guy had to cut it and use their backup chute. Very scary. I gave her a huge hug when I found out that had happened, but she just thought it was a cool story to tell.
We went back to the pub, had a few drinks and food for an hour or two while watching our DVDs and cracking up, then got our DVDs and photos and left.
Alicia and I decided to head back to the house because we were both tired, and Alicia especially was exhausted. Unfortunately, when we got there, we were locked out. They had left us a note but no key. And no door open. And no window open. Very very frustrating. First sign to us that we were not too high on the priority list for them, though I do understand that we should have figured that out with them beforehand, but what with Alicia being at the hospital and everything, it just didn’t happen. So instead of sleeping and showering and having some quiet time, we headed over to our friend’s beach house again. We tried to sleep but it was too loud, so we just sat around talking with people. Then we headed back to our house because everyone was on their way home from the dunes. We all go in the house, and no one says a single thing about the fact that we waited for four hours, and we were the last ones to shower. But we shake it off and don’t say anything, it’s not worth it. I felt a lot better after I showered and got ready to go out that night.
It was another frustrating night, we couldn’t get a taxi, no restaurants were open and everyone but me wanted to eat, then we finally got to a restaurant, it was closed, they called a taxi for us, he took four of us first then was going to come back for the rest of us. He didn’t come back for forty minutes. And the place he took us to eat was just a gas station. So Alicia and I take off to a bar we heard might be open. It’s a Sunday so the town of Swakopmund is literally dead. There was not a single shop open, nothing. And no one was on the streets but all the SAS kids. So we see one bar open, and of course it is swarming with SAS kids. Not my idea of a good time. I can get picked up on by an American guy at home right? Kidding. And by this point I had completely lost my voice. I was hoping to maybe meet a few people but I couldn’t even speak, so it was very frustrating. We stayed for about an hour then took off. The bartenders were sweating like crazy, I know for a fact it will be their busiest night at least until the next SAS shipment of kids comes in.
So we get home and everyone is still up just kind of hanging out. We hang out for awhile, but when it gets around 2 am Alicia and I are ready to go to sleep. I go downstairs and ask everyone if we could have a bed that night since we didn’t get one the night before. My answer is complete silence. So that’s a no. Their solution is to move upstairs to watch the movie so we can go to sleep on the couches. Thanks, I guess. Leah, who I really like, did offer hers up, and so did Megan. But that’s about it. Just really disappointing and the final sign to me that I wasn’t considered a part of this house or even an actual friend, though I paid just as much as everyone else did. I’m just tired of being under someone else’s run of things, and I’m not going to do it anymore if I can help it. It was kind of sad though, I just miss traveling with people that love me and are actually interested in my best interests. I really felt like just common courtesies were missing. I didn’t feel welcome there and I won’t be traveling with them again, which is unfortunate because Taylor is Melissa’s other best friend and I really do want to get to know her, but she is probably always going to traveling with that group.
Anyways, enough negativity. Alicia and I woke up at 8 am and hiked thirty minutes on the beach to this hotel and spa to get wonderful massages. My sickness was ridiculous this morning. I couldn’t breathe at all and my cough was terrible. All through the massage I struggled. But the fact that it was only 23 dollars for an hour made me feel pretty good! But my masseuse was great and she worked on my respiratory system and put eucalyptus on my chest and back and helped me breathe some in, and it actually really really helped. I felt much better the rest of the day.
Alicia and I got a cab back to Walvis Bay and stopped by the boat. Nancy and I set out to go kayaking, but unfortunately the place was closed. On the way there, though, something pretty shocking occurred. We witnessed a man get hit by a car. Nancy and the cab driver actually saw it, and I saw the man on the floor about a second after it happened. It was horrifying. The man was lying on the ground on his side, half sitting up, gripping his chest. It was clear he was in immense pain and shock. He was hit pretty hard. His hands were bloodied. A black woman ran over to him, talking to him, until she was holding him and crying. Another man was holding him too. A huge crowd gathered around him, watching. No way I was getting out of that car to go witness this man’s demise. Human nature seems so unnatural sometimes. An ambulance came within about a minute and a half. We eventually drove away. I cried for about ten minutes. It was just so shocking and a huge reality check. Someone on Semester at Sea died last semester in Hong Kong when he was struck by a car. It was just a big reminder of our mortality and how important it is to stay alert and take care of each other. More the reason for me to travel with people I trust.
It felt very strange to go on with our day after that, and I was shaken up for quite awhile. We just walked around town, bought some postcards and souvenirs, ate a great meal of this amazing sandwich with egg, mince, onion, tomato, and cheese, then headed back to the boat.
Namibia was a beautiful and unique country. A lot of SAS kids ruined it though, a group of about 100 kids got kicked out of a hotel for being too rowdy at the bars and so on, and some kids were kicked out of their beach houses. It’s disappointing to see that that is all that kids from my age group care about. I mean, I am doing my share of drinking, but I am not belligerent, yelling, obnoxious, or disrespectful. Ever. Just control yourself. It’s not that hard. Being on the ship sometimes makes me lose faith in humanity a little, or at least my own age group. But being off it, immersed in all of these amazing cultures, helps me regain it again.
I am so tired now and really need to go to bed. Today we didn’t have class, just a lot of meetings about South Africa and a mustering drill. And TACOS FOR LUNCH!!! My back is sunburned because I fell asleep and I am mad about it.
And tomorrow morning…SOUTH AFRICA!
Tomorrow: Watch the sunrise from the ship at 6:30 am. Geocaching with Justin till noon. Meeting up with Smith at noon and taking the red bus tour around the city. Dinner at Mama Africa with Hannah at 6:30. Going out.
Thursday: 4:15 AM meetup time for my safari. Two hour flight. Three days of seeing amazing animals.
Sunday: Khayelitsha township visit.
This country is going to amaze me.
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