Got up early and had the refuelling guy pick us up at 7:30 as agreed the evening before. The 50 liters from the jerry cans were sufficient such that we did not need to buy any drum fuel (it's expensive!). Besides the mandatory 45 minutes of reserve we would still have enough propellant for the planned route plus an additional half hour extra. Our chauffeur helped us put the jerry can fuel into the tank, backing his car up such that we could reach the tanks.

During take-off Linda thought she saw something strange happening to the landing gear on the passenger side. It seemed to her as if the wheel had dropped and was kind of dangeling. I could not really confirm or invalidate Lindas statement as I hadn't anything to compare with (haven't spent much of my time as a pilot leaning over to the passenger side and looking at the wheel).

If something really was wrong with the landing gear and it would break apart during the landing a sand-strip would be preferable from a safety point of view. A good reason to go to Swakopmund. On the other hand we weren't sure there would be a mechanic at Swakopmund - Walvis Bay for sure would have one though, but then again Walvis Bay had a tarred landing strip. We decide to delay the decission on where to land until we had more information. When we got closer to Swakopmund I called up the tower, told them about our situation and asked whether there was a repair-shop on site. They confirmed the presence of such a workshop which obviously made us land in Swakopmund and get the plane checked there.

On the way to Swakopmund we had passed the Brandenburg Plateau and circled the Spitzkoppe for a while. We agreed that we would try to get there by car as well - it looked a lot like Ayers Rock and the Olgas in Australia.

The landing in Swakopmund went really well - no problems with the landing gear whatsoever. The tower guided us to Westair Aviation, where I explained Roger, the owner of the shop, our situation and asked him to have a good look at the CRO and in particular the undercarriage. One of Rogers assistants drove us to the Desert Sky Backpackers in town.

We settled in, relaxed for a couple of hours, got ourselves organised and then went into town for lunch and also to find out what we were going to do the next couple of days.

Swakopmund is even more German-oriented than the rest of Namibia. Practically all signs are in German. At the tourist information, and many shops as well, you won't even be asked what language you prefer to speak. If you are white, you'll be approached in German. Unless you are really persistent and specifically ask to speak English you'll have to do it in German.

As for our plans for the next couple of days we decided to go for a trip to the renown Sandwich Bay, go kayaking in Walvis Bay, and also rent a car for two days to go on an overnight trip to the Spitzkoppe.

The weather here was pretty much the same as we had experienced it further north along the coast. Very foggy in the afternoon, which ment we didn't get to see a nice sunset over the ocean at all.

In the evening we had dinner at a moroccan restaurant nearby and hung out in the backpackers TV room together with an English couple and an Aussie from Perth.