Duned in

Swakopmund has more to offer than just skydiving. They've found that crazy tourists like us will do just about anything if it's on sand. In one action packed day, we went sandboarding, jumped out of the plane and then jumped on quad bikes for a wild ride on the dunes. And then sat down for one of the massive German-style meals that abound here in Swakop.

Sandboarding is just like snowboarding. In fact, they use snowboards with a layer of formica on bottom that you need to wax on every run. It's not as fast as snow, but hurts a lot less when you fall. The only real downside is that you have to hike back up the dune for each run. No lifts here! Mary had a great time with a few nice runs. I wasn't making any fancy turns with my ankle all banged up, but I still had a good time. Then they send you down some seriously steep bowls on flat boards clocking up to 50mph. Good times.

Off to the skydive and then straight to QuadbikingRiding the quad bikes was a blast. We ended up in a group of just 3 of us with a guide who took us up and over dunes, through "rainbow" runs where you go as high up the side of a dune as you can without tipping over - and then turn back down the same side. It's fast, fun and pretty scary. Don't worry mom and dad, we had plenty of reasons to take it pretty easy. We were tired after a long day, my ankle was pretty sore and there was an accident the previous day that kept our speeds down.
One of our truck mates was driving a little too aggressively and landed his bike too hard. He fractured a vertabrae and his pelvis. He'll live, but his vacation is over. He should be able to fly home to the UK in a couple weeks.Mary: I went to visit our bed ridden friend at the hospital. At the nurses' counter there was a box on the wall labelled "Specimens/Monsters". That was enough to keep me away. This happened to be the same hospital that Brad & Angelina had their baby last year. The nurses were kind enough to show some people the room they stayed in, etc. Yippee.