Kolmanskop ghost town

While visiting Luderitz, we also "made a turn" to check out the ghost town, Kolmanskop, about 10km away.  Ghost towns are fun, but we thought the sand dunes taking over Kolmanskop made it especially interesting.

  

 (Once upon a time, jumping in photos became cool and still somehow lame, but we fell for it anyway.)

Luderitz

Usually I'm shy about taking out our camera around towns and villages here, but while we visited the coastal town of Luderitz it was pretty quiet so we went for it.  Also note the German influence in the architecture.

While it's nice (for us, Namibians, and other Africans) to escape to the beach for holiday, laying on the beach on one of Namibia's coastal towns isn't exactly ideal (at least compared to other beaches we've been to).  They are quite windy (especially Luderitz) and overcast most of the time.  But the important thing is it's COOL (relatively).  So when it's the middle of summer and blistering hot everywhere else in Namibia, everyone happily flocks to the coast just to get a break from the heat... including us!

Sossusvlei

The red dunes, Namibia's #1 tourist destination, where we brought in 2012.

It's only now that I am posting these that I am seeing how fake these photos look!!  What a place!

Okavango Delta

Where we spent Christmas Day and Eve.  The dug-out canoes are called "mokoros" and to set the record straight, I admit that Kevin seemed to be picking up the skill of "poling" better than I could (now pretend like you're surprised)!  ;-)

Swimming pool:

Our few days spent camping in the Delta itself may have been our most relaxing holiday here yet.

"Couples Camping" in Spitzkoppe

Having been the only married Peace Corps couple in a while, we were excited to spend some quality time with the 2 couples in the newest education group (who arrived 1 year later than us).  We revisited Spitzkoppe (which you may remember from our holiday last year) and had a blast!  It was great hiking and climbing around together, but chatting, playing a variety of card games, and roasting marshmallows were also highlights.

Patches even joined us this time (pretty unexpectedly)!

And Patches turned out to be quite the mountain goat... But still, this trip exhausted even him!

Organ Pipes & Rock Art Near Khorixas

We finally got the chance to check out some of the tourist attractions near our original site, Khorixas.

And also rock paintings in the Brandberg mountains (Namibia's highest, not that that's saying much):