We have traveled on the newly named Intrepid truck 'Angela' through the pastoral lands of northern South Africa, rocky highlands of Namibia before descending into the semi arid yellow plains that transform into the vast white sandy desert of in the central of the country. I was able to blog last at the German port town of Swakopmund as I enjoyed a pork bratwurst sausage from a hotdog man inside the supermarket - much better than those served outside of Bunnings on a Saturday. The second half of our stay at Swakopmund was marred by my stomach not appreciating me demolishing a Peri Peri Burger particularly after ten days of Henry the cooks home style meals. I was starting to feel much better until about and hour into fishing off a reef on what was a fairly calm Atlantic sea. Needless to say that I needed to apologize to Simon the civil construction worker from Kalgoolie as the wind caught my stomach contents even though my head was nearly in the water over the edge of the boat, though it was just vodka and orange from the previous night out.

Half our group took it upon themselves to go skydiving and us sensible other half all climbed into the mini van to go out and support them. For those who may be considering making to Swakopmund the trip out is about a three beer journey (or five in Clive's shoes). Our driver did his best to break the nervous quietness in the bus with "so who's excited about this" with a even more nervous non-response from those jumping Mark who came along to support yelled ''Yeah I'm going to watch the s@%t out of this". Those jumping weren't encouraged when the driver suggested that you needed to jump whilst in Namibia as you "can skydive safety anywhere". Our van ripped across the flat desert plain to a shed and a landing strip only defined from the rest of the desert by it lack of scrub. All survived the jump and we all celebrated that night by watching the Germans be beaten by Spain in the semi final (surprisingly not many German supporters in the sports bar).

Having only just begun to travel I have slowly be introduced to clothing choices being limited along a spectrum of clean, slightly dirty and filthy with the risk of spreading disease if wore. Having said that I have coined a new term (I believe anyway) the TRAVEL-GASM. I had my first travel-gasm when every single piece of my clothing returned from the Laundromat clean and folder, we all smelt good for a few days at least.

After Swakopmund our days have quickly fallen into a routine of getting up at 545 on the road by 700 followed by a sleep till lunch. We are headed North towards Etosha National Park and have visited the Sossusuiel (desert sand dune captured islands of hundred year of bush that have long be cut off from the annual rains) and climbed Dune 45 only to miss out on a great sun rise due to cloud, painful calves for the next three days reminded us all of this.

In all a really enjoyable trip thus far with moments of ridiculousness hilarity particularly Cathy the school grad brit who admitted she needed to write and 'L' on her left hand for her driving test, world smelliest colony of fur seals, and me calling home though stuffed up the calculation on the exchange rate of the phone card and ended up having to ramble a 2-3minute conversation with the folks instead of the 15mins I thought I had bought.

We have been on Safari at Etosha but that will have to wait for another time.

Take care all