Dams, Cones and Goofin'

Dams, Cones and Goofin'

Another week of hanging out, chillin' and otherwise not working...

Elissa, Myself, Angela, Matt, Janet, Andrew and Dan all enjoying some great Ethiopian food... again (for me).		I don't know how this came about, but Mark, Dan and myself wanted to see just how bad corporal punishment was for the learners in Namibia.

Chad, Dan, Matt and Andrew all chillin' on the balcony outside the apartment provided by Peace Corps for those doing their mid-service medical exams.	Tuesday was taco night in room 4.  Elizabeth was quite happy with her taco, but Broc doesn't look happy at all...	This is the rear enterance to the medical flat.  As you can tell, it's pretty difficult to go in this way.
Elizabeth and Lindsay demonstrate how to blend into the local community while in town.	Andrew,Dan, Mark, Matt, Pam, Snoti, Angela and Amy... three groups of PCV's collide on the streets of Windhoek: the result, a picture of course!	Storm clouds on the horizon.  We actually got a bit of rain in parts of Windhoek last Saturday!

Thursday Janet, Matt, Dan and myself all walked to Avis, a small town outside of Windhoek to find the Avis dam.  With a little help from the Avis locals we were able to find it and spent some time dinking around.

Here's a shot of the dam.  It's pretty much like you'd expect... long cement wall.	We jumped a tiny gate to see what was inside of this mysterious room with valves.	Here's our group shot.  You can tell I just barely made it in the shot before the timer went off.
Dan was brave enough to crawl down into this hole. This guy knows no bounds.	After climbing up a hill we, of course had to try to huck rocks to the water below.  I was the only one who managed it.  I rock.	The water at the Avis dam is really bad- part sewage and part chemicals.  I wouldn't jump in this water even on the hottest Namibian summer day.
These towers are all over- no one seems to use them though.

On Sunday Dan, Matt P. and I returned to the Avis dam to hike around the reservoir.  We had a good time on the hike.  Here's a few pictures:

We surprised a large group of baboons.  There were also two warthogs and a bunch of ground squirrels.  We felt like we were in a game park.
Here's the river tributary to the reservoir.	I wasn't sure it was even safe to stand near this water... no problems keeping me out of it!	Another shot of the water from the other side.
Some cliffs and water.  It was here that I skipped a rock farther than I've ever seen a rock skipped before... honestly.  I rock.

Now, if you've gotten this far, you'll enjoy this last section.  On Saturday Matt P., Dan and I walked up to the "Cone" which is a large water tower up the road from my hostel.  The Cone also is host to several cell phone towers, police-band radio transmitters and microwave internet towers.  Suffice it to say that it's a valuable and closely guarded compound.  I say all this to give you an idea of what we felt when we noticed that the guard was nowhere to be found and the gate was unlocked.  Let the adventure begin...

Here's the "cone" and the gate.  Usually there's a guard standing here, but not this particular day...	Imagine our suprise when we found that the gate wasn't even locked! Just held shut with a piece of wire!	And the inner gate to the cone itself was also unlocked!  Imagine!
...So up we went!	The cone is about 50 feet high: high enough to make taking this picture a very scary ordeal.	Dan did eventually make it to the top.  His smile is not one of joy for the camera but rather relief at not dieing along the way up.
Here's the star at the top of the cone which is lit at night during the holidays.	Some shots of the view from the top.  You can see quite a bit more than when you're just at the bottom.
Matt opening the hatch to the water.  It stunk pretty bad, but was full of water, putting to rest at last my theory that it is no longer used.