Sunday 30 July 2017

Low-key Christmas

looking back to December 2016:

Plans for my second Christmas in Namibia went all kinds of skew-whiff, zigging and zagging about through various possibilities, places and people.  Different illnesses and difficulties were, sadly, responsible for the arrangements and re-arrangements, but eventually a happy outcome arrived, with PCV A. coming to visit for three days and a rent-a-car so we could putter about with a good bit more freedom (and a great deal more expense) than we would usually have.

The white one is ours, trying to catch some shade.


We were both mostly in the mood for movies, music and conversation, and got plenty of each.  Our major planned activity was a visit to Dune 7 and the moon landscape, both close by my home and each other.

Dune 7 is not especially special, but we didn't know that until we got there.  It's advertised as a tourist draw:  a high dune close enough to the bigger towns of Swakopmund and Walvis Bay to make a visit easy and quick.  On clear days you can see the Atlantic from the top of the dune, which is probably at least ten kilometers away and maybe more.  I don't really care.  The other mildly entertaining features are that walking a steep uphill of fine sand is hard, and coming steeply downhill in fine sand can be fun.  We did not have a clear day, so missed the ocean, but A. took the downhill route in great leaps, sinking far into the sand with each landing.  I was considerably more sedate, given my camera, knees and fear of falling.  With one or both feet sunk deep in the sand, if you fall forward I don't see why you couldn't just snap a fibula.  Jeez.

Heading up

and down.


However, I did have the fun of literally burning my toes.  Like most people, I did the climb barefoot because boots full of sand are no fun at all.  Since A. and I had had a holiday-like dilatory morning, we didn't reach the dune until about ten or eleven, by which time the strong December sun had heated those silicates to egg-frying temperatures.  We both kept digging our feet in deeper with each step, trying to find the cooler parts, but there weren't any.  I wound up with several blisters on and around my left toes, and considerable tender pinkness on the right.

When A. fell, he fell backwards.  Also he did not burn his toes, but he's a barefoot-runner kind of guy, so...


The moon landscape is gorgeous, and A. hadn't seen it before, so that was worth a drive.  We did set off to find some welwitschias, but we've both seen those and didn't enjoy the bumpy gravel road in a VW compact, and so turned back.

Does it look lunar in this photo?  Because it does in real life.


Christmas Eve's big fun was introducing A. to The Fate of Miss H.  Actually introduce, it turns out:  Lisa the nice waitress invited us to sit at a big table marked 'Reserved' and I checked with the lone man there, who welcomed us kindly.  Lisa then explained it was the band's table, and the man explained that he's the drummer and sound tech.  So we chatted with various band members and got some music recommendations that I've forgotten, and A. was as enthusiastic about their set as I'd hoped he'd be.  Lucky him; he saw them again in Windhoek this May, the night before he closed his PC service.

Festive!


On Christmas Day we cooked lentil loaf and Yorkshire pud with mushroom gravy and A's fabled mashed spuds, and it was all delish with a bottle of South African red.  And some superb Scotch whisky.  We picked 'Frozen' as our Christmas flick, and all together were very mellow, in a happy, merry way.

In the Christmas spirit, I ate too much mashed potato
to choke down a Cape Town chocolate for dessert.

Merry, merry!

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