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"Exciting News from the UK Lottery"
In the time it took to log in to the UK Lottery website after receiving the above titled email, I'd spent half of the 10 million pound first prize on fast cars, fast boats and even faster women. Being a generous type I'd also made a mental note to give Angela 50 pounds cash so she could go shopping and treat herself.
Imagine then the feeling after logging in to claim our lottery win, only to find we'd won 10 pounds! I double-checked the figure, just in case they'd accidentally lost 6 noughts from our winnings, and sadly they hadn't!
Despite the lottery win we've kept our feet firmly on the ground in Swakopmund. An exception to that was when we both climbed in to a coach, for the first time in living memory, and visited Rossing uranium mine out on the Namib Desert. The last time we attempted to visit a big hole (Kimberley diamond mine) it was shut for re-furbishment, this hole is so big it could never be shut.
The mine produces 8% of the world's uranium and is truly big scale stuff. The trucks that carry the rock up to the surface for processing (5 tonnes of rock produces a meagre 300grams of uranium by the way) cost a million pounds each and they have 98 of them. A tyre (see photos on our album site) costs the price of two new Toyota Corollas.
One fact that stands out in the Information Centre and the Rio Tinto Zinc annual report is that Iran owns 15% of the mine, ironic given the current issues about Iran's nuclear programme!
Glowing with either sunburn or radiation poisoning, Angela and I returned to the coast for a day's fishing with Gareth, a professional angling guide, whose credibility took a dent when he admitted to being a Chelsea fan! Gareth asked on the phone if we'd like to go shark fishing from the beach, an offer that I treated with healthy scepticism given that all I'd ever caught in years of UK beach fishing was a dead oil covered gull and a tyre!
Gareth was true to his word though and we have the photos of the spotted gully shark and sand sharks to prove it. The last 2 hours of the day were spent trying to catch a bronze whaler (bronzie) shark from the public beach between Walvis Bay and Swakopmund.
Gareth has caught one here that weighed in at 180kgs, and I was dying to catch one if only to see it shake up the kids swimming and screaming in the cold Atlantic surf near us, alas we had no bites! Never mind, the gully shark and 5 sand sharks were a fantastic catch for a day's beach fishing.
Couple of hellos are in order for people we've met at Alte Brucke campsite. Alberto and Daniela from Germany (good luck with your Southern African 3 months round trip) and Jan Hendrik and Michaela also from Germany, enjoy the rest of your trip!
We are leaving Swakopmund on 14 December as the price doubles (holiday season) and the place is filling up with quad bikers, scramble bikers and farmers, they are all too silent for our liking!
We are going inland in a vain attempt to find somewhere quiet and relaxing for Xmas and New Year then we'll head to an old favourite, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, for 15 days of game viewing before going over the border to South Africa to say our farewells to our Cape Town friends (that's cheered them up no end to read this!)
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