I DROVE!!!

I DROVE!
That’s right! I drove and it was SO MUCH FUN!

I’ll get back to that though! Let’s first start at the beginning of the weekend... We had a looong rehearsal on Saturday for Mascato. From 10-5! They mostly have 4 out of the 7 mass choir pieces by memory now. Some of them even have more!!
Mrs.Venter decided she wants to have rehearsals every day this week but all the Walvis Bay people can’t come that often (just because it takes about 45 minutes to get to Swakop from there!)
So, instead I’m going to Walvis Bay every evening this week to work with the choristers there while Mrs.Venter works with the ones here in Swakop! Personally I don’t think they need that many rehearsals but Mrs.Venter sets VERY high standards for Mascato!

After our marathon rehearsal Lex and I got together at her house. Pam just got back from a little holiday in Cape Town with one of her friends from the States. We were planning on meeting them a little later at Fagins.
I don’t know why but Lex and I got started listening to old choir music – everything from Form to ‘Nuf Sed to Kokopelli! We had a little moment of homesickness as we listened to a bunch of songs! (Like Lindsey and Rob in Soon As I Get Home and Kokopelli singing When David Heard and John singing I’ll Cover You)
It was fun but we ended up going over an hour late to the bar! Hahahaha…we’re such choir nerds! I love it!
Anyhoo, we still beat Pam and her friend to Fagins so Lex and I killed time by taking Shakey Face Pictures and meeting randoms who are working on the Vin Diesel movie. Finally Pam and her friend, Gina, showed up. They had met a guy in Cape Town, Alex, who was just traveling on his own so they brought him along too! He’s from Seattle and great fun!! We had a super fun time with them and learned some new dance moves from Gina and other local people! Lex and I started doing the Cadillac Ranch and amazingly people wanted to learn the steps! It was so funny!! This past week Lex took over Pam’s music classes at MYO and taught the kids Cadillac Ranch so that’s where we got the idea to bring some Alberta into the bar! Much fun!!

On Sunday all five of us decided to go on a road trip to Spitzkoppe. I rented a car and drove!! I even stayed on the right side of the road the entire time!! It was so fun.... I even got upgraded for free! We got to what we thought we Spitzkoppe at about noon. It took about 2 hours from Swakopmund to drive and it’s a little scary because most of the roads are gravel or sand.
So, we get to this mountain and find some sand roads leading to it. We start driving around trying to find the main entrance and come across some donkey’s pulling some carts. (or as Alex referred to them as horse-drawn donkey carts) We figured we must be going the right way since we finally saw some life out there other than us but then we came to sort o a rock quarry mining thing and figured after all the weird looks we were getting that we were in the wrong place.
So we headed back to the main road and drove maybe 3 minutes further and came to a sign that said “Spitzkoppe”. We were just a little too impatient before I guess….oh well, it was a nice little adventure.
So…we finally found the main entrance where we pay the park fee and then continued on our way. It was SO gorgeous there!! If you have a Mascato DVD, this is where they filmed it! We drove along these crappy little rocky and sandy roads trying not to get to much undercarriage damage to the car but saw some AMAZING sites! We saw some cave paintings at the “Bushman Paradise”. We went climbing in the mountains a bit next to all these HUGE boulders. We found a little campsite area where we had a little picnic lunch that I packed for us. We went to this one place called the “Ladder” which is basically a chain that’s bolted into the mountain and you have to pull yourself up to the top of the mountain. It was fun, but very tiring and a little scary! The view at the top was just spectacular though. There were some more cave paintings at the top. We found an area that at first we thought was a cave but as we got closer we discovered that it was more like a big amphitheatre right in the mountainside. We’re all such choir nerds and put on a little concert for ourselves right there! We sang some traditionals, American and Namibian Anthems and some random pop songs. The echo around there was crazy and lasted like 4 seconds long. (I took a video of us screaming and waiting for the echo! You can actually hear it!! Haha)

There’s a little restaurant there but it was closed so we decided to just go home instead. It was a super fun day and I wish we could all visit there! It’s amazing! I'll post pictures as soon as I can for it! The internet's going a little slow today!

This morning was sad because I had to return the car. Oh well, maybe I’ll rent one again sometime!
I should probably run. I only have a few more hours before I have to leave for Walvis Bay!!

8 more days till you’re in Swakopmund!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE