Swakopmund - Day 37

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Our B & B, the Princess Rupprecht Pension, was very comfortable and everything worked with Germanic efficiency. But we were anxious to get on so we set off early for the Toyota garage.

The service manager reacted immediately to our request to have the vehicles checked and allocated to us a young Afrikaner mechanic, Nicky, for as long as we needed. He spent about half an hour on my car going through all the suspension and steering set up and, to my thankful relief, gave it a complete bill of good health, although he could do nothing for me about the erroneous fuel gauge. He said that would have to wait till Capetown - probably a day’s job too. He then did the same for Ian’s car, a very thorough once over, and the only fault he found was a slight fuel weep from the auxiliary fuel tank. After all the work Ian has put into getting this tank right, he was not amused. However, it is not serious. For all this there was no charge. I must say we have had excellent service from Toyota throughout Africa, and long may it continue.

Chris and Camilla then did all the shopping for our next stage, we changed money and Ian and I spent some time getting the blog up to date and sent off, but we resorted to a CD with photos on it to go by airmail back to UK as the volume of pix now far exceeds the capacity of African internet cafes. We just hope that you are not too bored reading all this without the supporting photos - they will come.....!

Meanwhile, Swakopmund is an attractive town, laid out on a grid with no buildings much bigger than two stories and the majority look modern - although the town goes back well over 100 years. The streets are wide and traffic light. There are many traffic lights at cross roads and where there are not, each road at the cross road has a “Stop” sign - so everyone stops. We had no idea as how to proceed from there and not until I asked a local resident did I get the drill., Everyone stops; then the first to have stopped moves forward followed by the rest in the right “stopping” order. That made a little more sense but I did feel that perhaps this etiquette was more appropriate to Ireland than Namibia - but it works!.

In the evening we dined at a local, so-called, pub, which was packed with punters. We all ate fish which was quite delicious, accompanied by the best chips ever and washed down with South African wine. We like Swakopmund.

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Photos

Hotel Prinzessin Repprecht
Hotel Prinzessin Repprecht - an ex Hospital Swakopmund