Yet More Sand

I don’t know how many of you are well-acquainted enough with what I’ve been up to to remember the Namibian Quad Bike Incident, but for those who do you’ll be pleased to hear I’m in a dune-based adventure sport area again (the big sandy things, not the space-wormy things). For those who don’t; I fell off, a lot, at speed. In fact, I tore a huge hole in my trousers, got a few bruises and smashed my crash helmet, so I got to wear the instructor’s one for the rest of the ride.

Common sense might tell you that sand probably isn’t my medium. A knowledge of my own imbecility will further tell you that I wouldn’t let this deter me from yet more Adventure Sports*. Anyway, I went sandboarding.

The ride up there was terrifying, in a dune buggy made almost entirely out of roll bars where I dug my toes under the seat in front and clung on to the back of it as we were hurled around, and over, the dunes. Have I mentioned that they’re big? They’re big. When I manage to nick Leanne’s camera, there will be photos (a degree of rationality told me I would fall onto mine and smush it).

Luckily the nice man running it realised that as a group we were massively incompetent (as four plus four dentistry students from Newcastle) and so he thought that we should probably boogie-board for most of the time. This is where you lie face down on a sandboard, hold onto the foot restraints and go down a big hill head first, like sledding. This pleased me a lot. There was less far to fall.

And you know what? It was actually quite fun! After the first little hill, where you realised that rolling off wasn’t too painful, the rest were just great. The last one was a bit difficult, but that was primarly because it was so big that you ran out of scream way before you reached the bottom, so had to decide whether to breathe in and scream again, or just kind of tail off as though you’d fallen asleep.

We did get to sandboard, of course, but only on a little hill. We also had to face backwards, so that when we feel we hit the dune, not masses of open air. Here is a picture of me sandboarding with some degree of competence:

And here is one of me moments later:

Huacachina, Peru - Saf

* I am dubious as to whether they are either. ‘Adventure’ implies something that hundreds of white westerners haven’t done before, and ’sport’ implies some degree of ability.