Blogs from Walvis Bay, Namibia, Africa - page 2

After a relaxing day at sea and a fun Captain’s Party last night, we arrived at Walvis Bay, Namibia at noon and were signed up for the Dolphin & Seal Cruise that left the pier about 12:45. We were bused a short distance to another pier where we met our tour boat. Namibia is a former German protectorate but has been independent since 1990. Namibia is often called “The Land God Made in Anger”, because of its stark surreal landscapes, untamed wilderness and harsh environment. It has sand dunes that roar, rumble and wander, shipwrecks that litter the barren coastlines, some of the most desolate and spectacular scenery in the world, and many unique plants and animals. Walvis Bay sits on the edge of this vast country. It is formerly a South African enclave, and still ... read more

Bring Them All Home We've made our way back up to Windhoek and then over to the coast, courtesy of some near-hands-free driving, by our bus driver to the the curiously-named Swakopmund (try saying it - it sounds almost like somewhere in Yorkshire) with it's pleasant yet slightly strange Mid-West-America-meets-provincial-German-meets-African style of architecture, where we stay in very pleasant Alternative Space boutique lodge (nice one, Sue). Today is our day to go and do a bit of sea kayaking. As I'm sure you've guessed, this isn't purely in the interests of water sports and there's some animals involved in it somewhere. Knowing who'd be doing the paddling in a tandem, individual sea kayaks have been ordered. However, two of our co-kayakers haven't been given individual kayaks due to a slight booking misunderstanding, so Tim's efforts to ... read more

August 30-Sept 5 Had a great day today, met two guys from South Africa last night who were staying in our backpackers, Adam joined them for a whiskey and we got chatting. They were really good guys who kindly invited us to join them today to go dune boarding and quad biking in Nambi desert. The dunes were amazing, I have never seen such a big desert and we only saw 1 tiny section, the dunes carried on as far as the eye could see. Then on the other side there was the ocean. The drive there was surreal with huge dunes on side and the ocean on the other. First we waxed our board to help give us more speed (I was not sure I needed to go any faster), we had our quick lesson ... read more

Sorry for the ridiculous amount of time between posts. I have been so busy since Namibia with school work and another big trip in South Africa. But now to the point of this post: Namibia. I went into Namibia expecting absolutely nothing special, thinking of it as more of a stop to make sure we do not lose our minds on the ship. This mindset proved to be the best part of this stop. When we reached Walvis Bay (pronounced wall-fish), we were greeted by a young girls choir. The girls came onto the ship and sang to us and afterward we showed them around. The girls were so happy to meet and talk with us. We took them to the computer lab and let them print out their names on sheets of paper. It is ... read more

We set ourselves a gentle target today. Ian wasn’t feeling too fit. He had left his gout pills in Kenya so had bought some locally and the pharmacist gave him the wrong instructions and he took double the dose he should have. This may well have prevented any recurrence of gout but it didn’t half upset his insides - poor man. So we took it gently and drove the short distance down to Walvis Bay (Whale Bay) where we drove gently around the southern edge of the bay looking at the bird life. Camilla and Ian were really rather disappointed with what they found; there were not the hordes of flamingo which they had been lead to believe lived there, but there was some quality if not quantity. It was also interesting to see the huge ... read more