Hi guys,

I am writing this blog from Swakopmund in Namibia. It is the main holiday resort in Namibia and we have stopped here for a 3 day break! It has been nice and sunny, and nice to sleep in a proper bed! It is very beautiful here, it is very different to the rest of Namibia and strange how you come across this little touristy town in the middle of nowhere. We have been on the tour now for 8 days. It has been very enjoyable so far. We have spent quite a few days travelling and covered a lot of ground. The scenery here is beautiful and we are just starting to see some wildlife. The further north we go the more we will see. We had 4 zebra's run in front of the truck the other day- heard of 'Zebra Crossing'! We are leaving today for Spitzkoppe, known as the 'Matterhorn of Namibia'. The 1728m high rock formation is one of Namibia's most recognised landmarks. Tonight we are bush camping under the african stars! I am looking forward to getting to Etosha National Park in 2 days time, someone told me they saw 40 elephants there drinking at a waterhole :-).

Camping so far has been fine, the campsites we've stayed at have been very good and there have always been hot showers (I think this will get worse the further north we go)! Being in the desert it is very hot during the day and very cold at night. Our chef 'Malingo' is amazing, the food we are eating is great and always very healthy. We have a camp fire every night to cook dinner on. The landscape is beautiful here and the clouds very pretty. You can see so many stars at night in the clear african sky.

I am getting on with the group well. It is a good mixture of people from Australia, Britain, New Zealand, Canada, America and Russia. About half of the group are solo travellers, then there are some couples and groups of friends. All of our crew are African- from Kenya. Some of the group stop at Victoria Falls so then we will get a new bunch of people from there. 4 of us from the original group are going all the way through to Uganda. Our driver 'Simon' is very good- he gets us places fast! The roads are mainly just dirt tracks and very bumpy! The truck is a beast!! It was funny on the first day getting wedged between a car and a lamp post! The only way out of it was to reverse fast! This totally demolished a green bin and bent the lamp post, but the truck had bearly a scratch on it! In the process it did knock off the door handle, so we've spent the first week not being able to open the truck from the outside haha. Simon had to climb in the window to open the door from the inside! While we have been in Swakopmund the truck has been serviced and all fixed up. It's all good fun- we are the party bus! We have music on the truck and can plug in our iPods. We have a coolbox which we keep well stocked with beer! Wine is so cheap here and tasty!

Internet access is minimal, hense my lack of communications. Connections are slow or non-exsistant! And when we do come across it theres usually only one or two computers which everyone fights for...

So, its 11am, we have checked out of the dorm and loaded the beast! Lunch is at 12pm then we have a 2.5 hour drive. No doubt we will be climbing that big hill this afternoon after setting up camp, so look forward to that!

Hope all is well back home! Thanks for messages!

See ya x x x