Being the caring soul I am, it seems that I’ve shared my disease with Deb, so yesterday she had to get through a day of feeling quite ill while we spent six hours in the car driving to Swakopmund. The roads are average at best, at times quite badly corrugated and challenging to drive. We only needed one urgent stop for medical reasons and one stop for fuel. The scenery continued to amaze as the landscape continued to change over the first 200 km with the volcanic mountain outcrops giving way to the mountain ranges created from the ancient continental shifts.
The other side of the mountains was decidedly dull, reminding me of the Adelaide to Port Wakefield drive, top of my list of boring drives. It was desolate, flat country that eventually gave way to coastal sand dunes. It does look like there has been an long battle between the sand dunes and the human habitation. We drove past Walvis Bay, and a mixture of levels of housing from the informal settlements, low cost rentals up to more exclusive beach side suburbs. We settled into our guest house room and had an early night to ensure that we were in the best shape.
We had to be up early to get ourselves back to the Walvis Bay waterfront for a Kayaking trip. We had both been looking forward to this and thankfully, both felt up to the challenge. We were split into groups of ten people and I got to sit in the front because I was the tallest in our group, although there was a dutch guy in one of the other group who was much taller than me (6ft 9in). We drove for about an hour, mainly on sand and clay-based roads. Namibia is southern Africa’s largest producer of salt, exporting 120,000 tons of table salt annually as well as large quantities of industrial salt (used for de-icing and water purification). Our route took us past many kilometres of evaporating ponds. The pink ponds often seen in salt pans are due to a salt-resistant bacteria that lives in the ponds. This area around Walvis Bay hosts a large population of flamingoes, that are returning after migrating to the Etosha pan for breeding season.
As we continued to drive around the bay towards Pelican Point, we passed a number of Cape Fur Seal colonies. These seals are genetically similar to the Australian and New Zealand fur seals. It is a harsh environment and a male seal will typically have up to 60 ‘wives’ to make up his colony. Some young seals don’t survive, but there are hyenas and jackals who are the beach cleanup crew. The Pelican Point lighthouse was right at the tip of the land when it was built in 1932, but sits about 600 metre away and it distinctive by it’s black-banded paint that indicates water on either side.
We went kayaking in the water near the seal colonies and the seals swim happily around the kayaks. Due to the amount of things going on around us, the fast movement of the seals and the risk of equipment loss or damage, it was one of those occasions where the experience outweighed the need for photos. We were on the water for an hour paddling between different groups. It was great experience and one I would definitely recommend.
We had an afternoon tour booked to go to ‘where the desert meets the sea’ to the south of Walvis Bay. There are massive dunes and the area has been used for some major films including Dune Part 2. Once again we passed the salt pans and the flamingoes, but also happened upon a large rookery of cormorants, with a seagull or two going incognito among them.
One of the things that struck me about this activity was the sheer number of vehicles that were following the same route. The beach had much more traffic on it than any highway I’ve been on. I did note that the wind does seem to cover the tracks quickly. The ultimate goal was to take in the panoramic views from Dune 7 and a couple of other photo spots, while allowing plenty of time for the chinese tour group members to pose for 20 glamourous photos each stop.
We were then returned to our car at the waterfront carpark, where we fended off the local ‘artist’ and paid an appropriate tip to the men that had ‘protected’ our car for the day. We went to dinner at a restaurant called ‘The Tug’ which we’d actually booked for last night, but rescheduled in light of the stomach issues. We had seen on YouTube that the portions were quite big so we opted to share some starters. The food was mostly good, probably a ‘flash pub’ standard. It was a good finish to a busy day.
Until tomorrow!
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