Days 26 - 28

Day 26

We took our time over departure from Windhoek that day as the drive west to the Skeleton Coast and Swakopmund is a short one. I was sorry to leave Windhoek as it really is an amazing place and certainly somewhere I would like to explore with more depth another time but all thoughts of where we had just been passed out of mind and memory during the drive to the coast. The road takes you straight through the Namib Desert and since I’ve never visited a desert before the scenery was breathtaking; miles and miles of empty sand filled only by sand dunes and rocky mounds that loom out of the ground on the horizon. We went off road for a little bit to get near enough to a sand dune to climb it to get even better views of the Namib. The heat was incredible, so dry and intense, it seems unbelievable that the temperature can drop by so much when night time approaches. We continued onwards on another very good road surface (it seems unlikely that we will find any bad roads in Namibia) and suddenly about 10km out from Swakopmund there was a very noticeable drop in the temperature…which did by this point come as quite a relief. We reached Swakopmund at about 3 - another very striking settlement; once again the archtcture had a very distinct German feel, but here it also had a strange twist to it as all the house were painted in very bright, often eccentric colours. The streets were even wider than those of Windhoek, all of them lined with palm trees which bizarrely for me were decorated for Christmas - from being used to seeing poor, winter trees in England decked out with lights and Santa Clauses for Christmas it comes as rather a shock to see Palm Trees given the same treatment. We drove down to the sea front and then saw signs for a Youth Hostel, just 150m up from the beach. It turned out to be the government run campsite that we had hoped to be aiming for which at 15 ZAR a night (roughly $1.50) is a seriously good deal for us. It is a rather daunting place; the whole site is spread over perhaps 3 acres of land, most of it being taken up by this fortress like building that houses dormitries, a large school-like dining hall, and the main office and reception area. There are more rooms that form a square with a sandy courtyard in the middle. The camping site is not very spectacular, a small sandy patch wedged between two austere looking outbuildings that leads out onto a discarding area which is full of old bottles, broken furniture and some rubbish bins. Still at least the hostel has a kitchen with a very efficient gas cooker which makes up for the fact that the fridge doesn’t work and there are no cooking pans like in other places with self catering kitchens. It was so refreshing to cook my stew on a a stove with two hobs that heats up water quickly, rather than faffing around with my Trangia, which although very effective for about 2 people makes the process of Stew cooking very arduous. We finished our supper by 8 (very early for us) and decided to hit the Friday night scene of Swakopmund. We found a bar called ‘Aktion Bar’ (no it’s not a spelling mistake, the Germans spell action with a ‘k’). We spent the rest of the evening there, watching the German youth of Swakopmund partying and comparing them to the scene in Nairobi. James and Robert were hugely disappointed at the huge lack of attractive girls. Robert says as a whole he has not seen one attractive woman this whole trip; I think he need just wait till we reach Cape Town and then there’ll probably be too many. I managed to make my second friend of the trip at the bar; I couldn’t quite pick up his name because he was so drunk his speech was rather slurred, but he did tell me all about his brother who is studying law at Oxford and how he himself is involved in the Diamond Industry. We were rather hoping that he’d buy us a round, but sadly the friendship did not progress to that stage, so eventually we decided to call it a night and go back to our tents. The temperature in Swakopmund at night is rather like England in late February so we were all rather cold and looking forward to snuggling up in our warm sleeping bags.

Day 27

Our favourable opinions of Swakopmund were enhanced by spending the next day wandering around its streets and lazing on the beach. We woke reasonably early and Robert and James wandered into town to buy some brunch and to find an internet café, whilst Seren and I ate pancakes with the very budget Golden Syrup we’d managed to pick up in Windhoek, which despite its cheap price and rather dubious packaging tasted seriously good. Then we all headed off to the beach, where we found to our delight that Saturday is race day in Swakopmund and there on the beach was a set-up for motor boat racing. We played Frisbee for a while and then sat down to watch the races, very fun indeed. Afterwards we visited a very agreeable stall called ‘Chip n’ Dip’ where you buy cones of chips with practically any imaginable topping - you can even have biltong on your chips! Swakopmund is very much a tourist destination, particularly for Namibians living in in-land towns like Windhoek where at this time of year the heat becomes too much, so they head to the coast where the sea breeze and desert make the temperature much more comfortable. There are also several hundred Germans here on holiday, because as the guidebook so aptly put it “Swakopmund is often more German than Germany” so I suppose they feel at home here. On our way back to the youth hostel from the beach we found a very sweet bakery that actually sells Bretzels, I was so excited and though they didn’t quite taste like your average Bretzel you buy in Munic they were almost as good. It is very strange after spending so much time away from civilization in national parks and in small villages to feel like you are staying in a quasi-european town. I keep having to remind myself that I am in Africa. In the evening we crossed over the road into a little German beer-house and restaurant, which seems to be the place to hang if you are an octogenarian German man. Still the food was very good, spare ribs and chips, and the landlady even gave us each a beer on the house because the chef had a bit of a disaster and couldn’t work the water heater so the food came slightly later than expected. We also had a very in-depth discussion about the differences between humans and animals and the evolution of language...Guy would have been very proud!

Day 28

I’m sitting on the sand of a beach on the Skeleton Coast, some 100km north from Swakopmund, with Seren’s laptop on my lap, watching the boys try and catch fish and writing up today’s Travel Blog, which I’ll transfer via my USB later when I visit the internet café. We’ve just been to visit the Seal Colony at Cape Cross. We overestimated the time it would take us to get there so arrived at 9, an hour before opening time, but the woman on the gate let us go in anyway which was great because it meant that we missed all the tourists and were able to watch the seals in solitary. The seal colony is an incredible but ludicrous sight - thousands and thousands of seals flapping about amongst the sand and making noises that faintly resemble a herd of distressed sheep. To make things better we’ve come at birthing time so there are thousands and thousands of baby seals which really are the most pathetic creatures I’ve ever seen, with their huge blind eyes and unformed flippers. The smell was really quite disgusting, a mix of a seriously putrid fish smell with the smell of a dying hippo, it was so strong I felt like it was seeping into my skin, although it’s worth braving the smell to watch the seals, we even saw some fighting. Sadly I didn’t see any sharks, though I spent much time perusing the water line with Seren’s binos, I was really hoping I might just spot a Great White come in and grab a seal but no such luck. Afterwards we drove back to the ‘Fisherman’s Bar’ which we saw on our way in, for a quick coke, this is where all the Boers come after their day’s fishing trip, and then we headed off road out to the sea where I’m sat now. Robert is trying to emulate the Boer Fisherman who are sat some 100m to our left, but they have rods 3 times the size of his so I’m not quite sure that he’ll manage.
Tomorrow we’ll probably head down to Walvis Bay which is apparently a great birdwatching hot spot, and then it will be onwards to South Africa!

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