Blogs from Cape Cross, Namibia, Africa

During our visit to the Skeleton Coast we found that not just the name of this coast was created from the unforgiving nature of the coast. It is a foggy region with rocky and sandy coastal shallows that has not only been a graveyard for ships and their crews but also we found hundreds of skeletons along the beach which are belonging to the seals, whales and other animals. Hyenas’ tracks are leading to the dead bodies and their remains as well as jackals and birds of prey. Imagine walking through an unburied graveyard and a fresh smell is of the previous nights ramblings wafting on the breeze. On this beach very few walk as you can drive the few kilometers to one of the biggest seal colony viewpoint in the world but we hadn’t choice ... read more

Day 13 (Sunday 03-May-09, JRJ) Up at 7am for breakfast. Got on the road just after 9 cos Benji had a few problems. Got to Cape Cross at around 10:30 to see the smelly seals. Probably one of the worst smells ever! Even worse than Natalie after a Lamb Bhuna! Stopped for lunch at roadside next to a road sign riddled with bullet holes - very comforting! Not long after lunch we arrived at Brandberg White Lady Lodge & Campsite. Put our tents up and went for a short drive to a National monument site to go see the White Lady cave paintings. The cave paintings were about an hours walk from the car park through quite rough terrain. On the way to paintings, we encountered a troop of chacma baboons, horned viper, loads of birds ... read more

Not long after leaving our bush camp site we arrived at the famous Cape Cross Seal Colony. Now the first thing to say is that we had been warned that the smell of these seals is usually very unpleasantly overpowering. When we first arrived I could therefore confirm that my sense of smell is as bad as I have always thought as I couldn't really smell anything, let alone anything unpleasant! Ha ha. We spent about 45 minutes at the colony and it was amazing. There were seals as far as the eye could see. Thousands and thousands of them. However, the best thing was that we had timed it just right for when the seals were giving birth to thousands of tiny babies. We even saw some being born there and then in front of ... read more

Today we set out from our almost-bush-camp at Spitzkoppe (old rock paintings to be seen there) and drove to Cape Cross to visit the massive seal colony. It was incredible to see so many of them all in one place. If they weren't sleeping or swimming in the water, they were battling each other for positions on the rocks. By far the most memorable part of the seal colony is the overpowering odor, and hence why they get called the Stinky Seals. I think I prefer the penguins...... read more

Seals are smelly! I did already know this from NZ where a small number of seals made a terrible smell. This was NOTHING compared to the stench of Cape Cross. There are 200,000 seals here and they all smell! When we first got out of the car it was pretty overwhelming. You did get used to it pretty quickly though. The seals were amazing though mainly because there were so many of them. They were as far as the eye could see. It was like being in a BBC documentary! The only not so pleasant thing about it all was the fact that there were loads of black backed Jackals about waiting to prey on any unattended seal pups. Once we had finished at the seal reserve we went back to our very nice accommodation for ... read more