Wednesday 2nd December:

10.00am and we're queueing to get off and meet up with Photo Ventures, always hoping that when a tour company advertises it as a "photo tour" the guide may firstly know where all the best places are, and have selected them specifically, and two, maybe they know a little bit of the technical side of photography. In our case today, we could have been taken anywhere, and it would be a great spot for a photo,  but definitely no photography tuition. Our guide is Ben, and he maintains, "I'm not a cowboy", well that's good then so we can rest easy as he careers up and down the most amazing sand dune landscape. We head south from Walvis Bay, yes should have mentioned we are in Walvis Bay today, the largest port in West Africa. We heading down to a delta area, with the sea on one side, and yes we do actually drive along the beach for some considerable distance, and towering sand dunes on the other.

There are four 4x4 vehicles, ours a 4.8 litre Nissan which drove as sweet as a nut, up and down 30 degree incline dunes effortlessly. We track a large Chinese group of maybe six vehicles, and Ben explains when he has guided Chinese people they keep shouting, Stop, Photo, Stop, Photo. Well maybe that's because like me they thought it was a Photo Tour Ben. We pass a group of paragliders using one the higher dunes to get airborne. Lunch is a small affair but atop a large dune, and well away from the Chinese who were still looking for places to take photos of each other pretending to be Winston Churchill. I manage to climb one of the higher dunes and get rewarded with magnificent views of Sandwich Harbour, which would have been breathtaking had the weather not be grey and somewhat overcast. The sun comes out for 15 minutes or so, and the light and shade plays on the dunes which stretch as far as the eye can see, and very much further, hundreds of kilometres in three directions, the fourth being the sea. This coast was notorious for sailors in the 1880s and early 1900s because of the fog which drove ships aground. Little did sailors that survived and reached the beach realise, that they had just come ashore on one of the most inhospitable coastlines in the world, with desert in all directions, and virtually all will have perished.

Dinner with Dennis & Mary-Beth, he a little on the serious side, she a lovely lady, and with Dennis & Sue, he quiet, relaxed and endlessly harangued, she a very good sparring partner, good company all four. We talk about many things, and as ever get onto energy, and shale gas. Dennis explains that in Oklahoma from whence they hail, they have daily earthquakes of varying scale, but certainly on a scale that we have been shaken by in Rutland, so please don't believe that everyone in the US supports fracking. Dennis is a psychiatrist, and has a very clear, articulate and thoughtful delivery, and I'm sure he's also a man of the church, could even see him as a lay preacher. Mary-Beth confirms their religious beliefs when they discuss the forthcoming wedding of one of their sons, and are clearly disappointed that he and his betrothed will not get married in church. MB has been a nurse and until retirement a Masters teaching nursing at their local university.

We finish the evening with Sue & Dennis in Horizons and are entertained again by Terry Bishop, as he sings and tells humorous anecdotes, very funny, and a good way to finish the day.