The first big activity stop on the tour was in Swakopmund, Namibia. There Namib Desert was the perfect place to try sand boarding which I’ve wanted to do forever, and go skydiving. I even managed to fit them both into 1 day!
There are 2 types of sand boarding, stand up and lay down, and I tried both. Stand up is basically the same as snowboarding. Lay down is going down face first on these crazy carpet style pressed wood boards. We had to walk up the dune for each run down, so it was 10 seconds down, about 10 minutes back up. I managed to get in 10 runs over the morning, 8 standing and 2 laying down. By the end I was pretty exhausted from all the walking. It was good to get the exercise though, after sitting in the truck so much.
I’d heard mixed things about sand boarding, that it’s like snowboarding but not nearly as good, so I set my expectations pretty low. I totally loved it! So much fun. Hiking up the dune each time wasn’t so fun, but one of the reasons it’s permitted in the Namib Desert is because it’s such a green activity. We waxed our boards before each run so that we’d go quicker and the just went for it. I even tried the jump they had set up, but wiped out on the landing both times.
My first run doing the lay down I clocked 70km/hr, and it was pretty fun. You just have to pull up the front corners so they don’t catch, and kind of steer with your feet. The second time I went my board caught and I bailed and went skidding on my stomach. I only reached 63km/hr. Sand everywhere!
Back at our place I took a quick showering before heading out to the Desert for the sky dive. The whole experience happened really quickly. They gave us our safety briefing, handed us our jumpsuits and then we were off to the plane. Four of us from the group went, and we went up in the plane two by two. The plane they took us up in was tiny. Five of us were squeezed in the back; the two of us skydiving, our tandem instructors, and a cameraman to film my drop. I didn’t know until I was on the plane that there wouldn’t be a door. We circled around over the desert and Swakopmund, to reach 10,000 ft. My skydive guy was being a bit creepy, and kept on tickling me the entire flight up, and telling me not to be nervous. There wasn’t much I could do, seeing how I was already strapped to him. Kind of uncomfortable though.
When we reached 10,000 ft, they were like, “all right, move to the door, legs over the edge, let’s go!” It all happened so quickly, I didn’t really have much of a chance to get nervous. It felt really cool to drop from the plane though, and not nearly as scary as I expected. The free fall lasted about 35 seconds, but felt more like 10 seconds. Then he pulled the chute and we floated down. I tried to steer the chute and it’s actually pretty tough, you really have to yank on the cords. I totally loved skydiving and would definitely do it again!! Aside from the creepy man I had to go tandem with.
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