Day 10

Despite the late night, we had to get up relatively early to have breakfast as Willem and I signed up for quad-ing that morning in the surrounding desert. Although the red color had disappeared from the sand, Swakopmund was surrounded on all sides with sandy dunes, making it look like Katwijk on steroids. To spare Willems back we had decided on the less intense quad option, that also included wildlife watching and with me being the physically challenged girl that I am, I was fine with that. I started out on a quad that was not very well aligned, making it hard to make left turns, but once I got a new quad and the hang of handling that thing, I really enjoyed it. It turned out that the wildlife in the desert was limited to a gecko, a salamander, a snake and a spider, but since contrary to all expectations I did get the hang of these quads, I was fine with spending most of the morning racing through the dunes. The only downside was that the middle-aged man driving in line in front of me was more scared than I usually am, which on one hand was nice for a change, but it also caused him to stop in relief every time he made it to the top of a dune, seemingly unaware of the fact that I was still behind him and also needed a flat surface to come to on a halt.
After washing off the adventure dust from the quad ride we walked into Swakopmund again. We’d seen a nice place the day before where we went for lunch. We had a very good 3-course lunch with wine, overlooking the sea, which we finished at 15.00. As we had done all the sightseeing the day before already and since Willem does not like his hair being too long, we went looking for a hair dresser for him and boy did we make the day of at least three beauty salon employees! We had only seen what appeared to be hair dressers for women, so at one point Willem decided to ask if they would also cut males. Luckily this lady was forthcoming enough and started looking for hair clippers. Willem asked for a 3 mm cut, but at that setting nothing came off, nor did anything happen after setting it to 2 mm, but luckily the desired result was obtained after the lady took off the attachment and started shaving Willems head without it. After paying we could only imagine what those girls must have thought of the bald white man coming in paying all that money for cutting hair that was barely long enough to be cut, but Willem was happy and I have to admit that it looked better afterwards.
That night we had dinner with the whole group again. Reservations had been made at 18.15, but due to the extensive late lunch we had, I did not manage to process much food, although it was very nice. Since we were at smaller tables than the night before, the process of splitting the check was much more efficient. I had told Willem that I was willing to join for one more drink, but that I was not going to waste another night with a bed by hanging around in a bar sober. As more people seemed to be sharing that opinion, I was able to enjoy 8.5 hours in that bed with the white sheets that night.