Alex in Africa: Wet Hot Namibian Summer

I know it’s been a long time since my last blog post but the reason is because I’ve literally been gone the entire time. Yesterday, I finally returned back home. For the past month and a half, I’ve basically traveled all around the country. I’ve been to nine different sites and I’ve enjoyed exploring Namibia very much. I don’t really know how to start writing about my holidays because I’ve done quite a lot. I went to Windhoek, Swakopmund, Otjiwarongo, Ondangwa, Rundu, Kongola, Katima Mulilo, a village near Ondangwa and I even stayed in Oshakati for a week during Decemebr to show other volunteers my site. Each town/village were different but I really enjoyed them all. Overall, I did about 5,500 km of traveling and probably spent around 60 hours in a vehicle throughout the last month and a half. Since we don’t have much money on a Peace Corps budget, the main way of traveling around has been hiking (hitch-hiking). This may sound like a dangerous way of traveling but it is fairly common here and I’ve been able to meet a lot of interesting characters during my journeys and I never felt in any sort of danger. Hiking can be difficult at times because you end up spending a lot of time waiting for a ride. You can wait anywhere between 30 minutes to 6 hours. It definitely gets exhausting after a while.

Some of the highlights of my trip includes sandboarding in some dunes outside of Swakopmund, eating the largest burger I’ve ever come across, getting sunburnt, BEACH, playing with bow and arrows, watching the sunset over the ocean or the river, buying awesome shirts, eating great food, going on a Game Drive where I got to see some baboons, hippos, kudu, impalas and lechwe, seeing Elephants on the way to Zambezi, seeing the sites of other volunteers and spending Thanksgiving, New Years and Christmas with other volunteers.

It’s strange to be back home and alone again because I haven’t been by myself since Thanksgiving. Although its nice to finally sit back and relax, I definitely do enjoy the company of others and I’m glad that I got to travel with so many great people.

Now, it’s time to get down to business again. I thought I started work on the 13^th because I received an email saying that’s the date that the office would open again. Apparently, work doesn’t start till the 16^th. I guess my holiday isn’t quite over yet :)