{"id":414,"date":"2011-01-20T18:56:42","date_gmt":"2011-01-20T18:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/?p=414"},"modified":"2014-03-08T17:51:48","modified_gmt":"2014-03-08T17:51:48","slug":"swakopmund-day-61-to-64","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/2011\/01\/swakopmund-day-61-to-64\/","title":{"rendered":"Swakopmund, Day 61 to 64"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This town is heavily influenced by its German past and only a few kilometres from the Tropic of Capricorn. \u00a0A-frame buildings, German food, German drinks, German language and the occasional German tourist. \u00a0The unusual thing is not its quaint German feel but that this town is in the desert and by the coast in the middle of nowhere. \u00a0The weather is always hard to predict, fog, sun, fog, sun, mist, and cloud all in one day!<\/p>\n

Oh, and the food here! \u00a0People think they will lose weight when they come to Africa and there is nowhere better than Swakopmund to discredit that theory.\u00a0 Portion sizes are massive so when ordering food you need to be careful as you will get more than you can possibly chew. \u00a0And the meat! \u00a0Wow! Game meat, seafood, biltong (smoked meat strips) all seem to be much bigger here. \u00a0You have to make serious choices here; do I want the 500g, 800g or 1kg rump steak? Perhaps I should have game meat but will it be Springbok, Kudu, Oryx or Ostrich? \u00a0Maybe a gigantic pizza – the calzone stuffed with Springbok is so big they have had to make bigger plates to accommodate it. Generally, the food in Swakopmund is a very fulfilling experience.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Now we come to the big three of Swakopmund. \u00a0The big three refers to the most popular activities that can be done here and they are sand boarding, quad biking on the dunes and skydiving over the dunes.\u00a0\u00a0 There are other activities available – parasailing, township tours, horse riding, dune tours, fishing, scenic flights, and go karting. \u00a0We all make our choices and head out to increase our blood pressure yet again.<\/p>\n

I put the challenge out there for one activity and that is the lie down sand boarding. \u00a0If anyone from the crew could beat my all time best run of 74km\/hr, I\u2019d buy them a shot and if they beat the all time record for the dune of 83km\/hr I\u2019d buy them three. \u00a0\u00a0And you know what? \u00a0No one could do it. \u00a0They got close some got to71, 72 and 74km\/hr but no one could beat it so my money stayed in my pocket and my reputation was intact.<\/p>\n

The skydiving is something that people really take time in deciding. \u00a0If it was me I would do it as soon as we pulled into town. \u00a0But people like to wait. \u00a0Then you must wait for the weather and that is unpredictable here in Swakopmund.\u00a0\u00a0 So you may be stressing for a couple of days as you waiting \u00a0that moment when you get to 10 thousand feet and jump out of a plane putting all your trust into a dude you met 30min ago, hoping that he remembers to pull the cord to the parachute that you are both attached to. \u00a0\u00a0However, when the guys get back from the jump it is hard to establish if they a jovial because,\u00a0 a) they survived the experience,\u00a0 b) they have a few drink before hand to boost their courage, or c) drinks were consumed in celebration of completing the jump and surviving. \u00a0Regardless, they are extremely happy they survived their jumped out of a perfectly stable plane.<\/p>\n

Tip of the Day:<\/em><\/strong> Sand, just enjoy it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This town is heavily influenced by its German past and only a few kilometres from the Tropic of Capricorn. \u00a0A-frame buildings, German food, German drinks, German language and the occasional German tourist. \u00a0The unusual thing is not its quaint German … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,435,433,442,437,438,100,440,199,443,434,439,436,52,441,432],"class_list":["post-414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-14th-nov-2010-absolute-safari-on-shaggy-denis","tag-african-holiday","tag-biltong-smoked-meat-strips","tag-game-meat","tag-horse-riding","tag-kudu","tag-oryx","tag-ostrich","tag-parasailing","tag-quad-biking","tag-sand-boarding","tag-seafood","tag-skydiving","tag-springbok","tag-swakopmund","tag-township-tours","tag-tropic-of-capricorn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1229,"href":"https:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions\/1229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.absoluteafrica.com\/liveblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}