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Monthly Archives: November 2012

its been a busy week for the three of us. while i’m holed up in the film studios, my better halves have gone to no less than two birthday parties this week. the first one was for this kid nash, who turned four. he is a big kid – big enough that people regularly mistake him for a seven year old! his party was at the aquarium.

in between the next party, brenda and nayou snuck off to the beach for a play in the sand. they went with marley and tyler, twins who nayou has been spending a lot of time with in cape town.

i only know secondhand, but the beaches here are gorgeous. white sand, blue waters (albeit feezing), and nice warm sun. i’m looking forward to getting acquainted with the beach once we wrap!

yesterday was the twins’ birthday. they chose to have their party on a pirate ship (awesome!).

the birthday trifecta will be completed this sunday with nayou turning five. we’re going to keep it mellow and have a small gathering at imhoff farm, which has a nice cafe, a play area and a snake park.

we’re ten days into our short sojourn in cape town. its both amazing and a bit tiring to be back in a big city again – on the one hand you get all these things like an access to healthy food, an aquarium, yoga studios, and good restaurants, but getting around is a pain and we are still getting used to all the noise at night. just a different mixture of good and bad i suppose!

here are some photos of our last days in swakopmund.

this is timo, one of the caretakers of our building.

and of course there was not one, but two last visits to the swakopmund snake museum.

the flight to cape town was like this:

luckily our digs in cape town are nice and roomy. we have no less than three bathrooms and two bedrooms, with a big wrap around balcony. unfortunately we can’t really use the balcony. we’re on the first floor so and there are lots of cars that pass through, making it noisy and not so clean. can’t complain though – most other people have a small single room! i also love that the place gets cleaned everyday and we climb into freshly made beds each night. i’m trying not to get too used to it though 😉

we saw this on our first day in cape town. apparently charlize’s mere presence is worthy of front page news.

now that we’re shooting in a studio i have become much busier than when we were in the desert. which means that my explorations of cape town have been rather limited, but brenda and nayou have been out and about snapping lots of photos. here are some from their excursion to a bird park. with bonus monkeys!

in what is becoming an ongoing trend, we met up with one of my high school friends sandra yesterday for brunch. so far i’ve seen old high school friends in australia, mexico, america, bali and now south africa. it wasn’t a big school at all (my class had ~30 people), but we are everywhere! the nice thing is that we all still get along really well. good stuff. here we’re trying to do hand signs for namibia and south africa… but not particularly well.

sandra also took some great family photos of us! its not often brenda and i are in photos together 🙂

two more weeks before we wrap! and less than one week before nayou turns five!

we’re safe and sound in cape town, and loving being in a cosmopolitan city. there is so much to see and do its a bit overwhelming! we’re laying low and staying pretty local as nayou and brenda are both sick. nayou is on the mend, but poor brenda is not feeling well at all. at least our apartment is roomy and comfortable.

the big news in our family is that nayou’s second tooth fell out yesterday. its became wobbly around the same time as the first one, and now its out. there is a large gap in nayou’s smile now, and it makes him look so much more like a young boy. excuse the horrible photo, but this was taken late at night when the poor guy was very tired.

 

 

its hard to believe, but we have two more days in namibia. our arrival way back in may seems so distant, yet at the same time our seven months here is all a bit of a blur. its been an amazing experience to come out here and experience life on the skeleton coast. and i’ve also learned so much about the realities of shooting a movie. its a totally different view when you’re just on the post-production side of things.

the small town pace of life has been good for our little family. nayou has done some serious growing up here, mostly all by himself – no more wetting the bed, no more pacifier, a burgeoning interest in snakes and geology, not to mention a big leap in his physical strength and coordination. go nayou! plus he’s made some good friends, both children and adults. we’ll definitely miss living here, and i’m not just talking about the free rent 🙂

for our last foray into the namibian landscape we spent a night at the erongo wilderness lodge, about three hours drive inland from swakopmund.

look at these super mario clouds!

nayou got to drive along the gravel road leading to the lodge:

the lodge is a small eco-resort nestled amidst massive granite hills. you get to stay in a luxury tent, which is something that brenda has been dreaming about for a long time. see if you can spot the tents in this photo:

this is the walkway to our tent:

we arrived in the early afternoon and it was hot hot hot. too hot to do anything except hang out by the pool and take a siesta. once the sun went down we joined some of the other guests for a sunset hike up a nearby hill. the views, as expected, were stunning. i’m going to miss the wide open landscape of namibia!

we snuck in a quick morning hike in before we headed back to swakopmund. even though we only got away for a night, it felt like a restful holiday. i do wish we had a couple of days to spend there though – there is a lot to explore, and the lodge is very conducive to just sitting around and relaxing.

check out this tree growing out of the side of a rock! nature is like, woah, dude.

on thursday afternoon we head to cape town where we will be based for about three weeks. its back to hotel living for a bit before our next adventure begins.

see you later, namibia. its been real!

here are some photos from the camping trip brenda and nayou went on two weeks ago. spitzkoppe is under two hours drive from swakopmund and i think is one of the highlights of this already beautiful country.

unfortunately i had to stay in swakop and work while they were gone but after seeing their photos i was supremely jealous. just look at this campsite!

brenda went with fiona and nataliya, who are both here with their husbands and kids for the movie. fiona’s son atticus is seven and nayou adores him. they are namibian bffs!

the kids had an amazing time climbing all over the rocks and exploring the area. the big mountains you see sticking up out of the ground are chunks of volcanic granite. they are very gritty and tend to crack off in layers (like an onion) due to the way they cooled.

of course the parents were chillaxing hardcore as well 🙂

the landscape makes it the perfect habitat for all kinds of animals, including gazillions of rock dassies and bird species.

they came back exhausted and happy. just the way a camping trip should end. we’ve now entered that mad rush period before the move as we sort out our plane tickets, clean the house, run the errands and pack our stuff. eleven more days until cape town!

 

 

 

there are just under three weeks left before we pack up yet again and move to cape town for the remainder of the shoot. i think chances are slim that we’re ever going to be in this corner of the globe again so we have been busy squeezing in trips to see as much of namibia as we can. a couple of weekends ago i went on a man-trip with some friends down to sossusvlei. its about a five hour drive from swakopmund along very bumpy gravel roads.

sossusvlei is famous for its huge red sand dunes which look stunning against the white salt pans that dot the landscape. combine that with blue skies and you have one of the most photographed landscapes in the world.

we arrived on saturday afternoon in scorching heat. it was way too hot to do any desert activities so we followed the advice of the lodge owner and went to this great little water hole to cool off.

we also snuck in a sundowner drive to see some of the scenery.

the next day we got up early and climbed up big daddy, a 325m high sand dune which is one of the largest in the world. it was definitely an intense climb, all the more so because we were the first ones up. blazing a trail up a sand dune is no easy feat! on the other hand, sprinting down one of its steepest faces into deadvlei was so easy! hehe.

i couldn’t resist getting bodie to snap some yoga photos in deadvlei for me. i think they turned out amazing!

last week brenda and nayou went to spitzkoppe fir a four day camping trip. i stayed at home and held down the fort while they had many adventures climbing rocks and looking for gems. the photos from that trip are on a friends’ camera so we’ll post some as soon as we get them!

in the meantime here are some snaps from a sunset horseback ride we did on sunday. my rear end was hurting the next day but nayou and brenda rode like pros.