Walvis Bay

Where the hell is Walvis Bay, you may wonder, and why the hell would anyone go there? To answer the first question, it is on the coastline of South Western Africa in Namibia which is commonly known as the skeleton coastline due to the amount of ship wrecks and marine animal carcasses washed up here. The answer to the 2nd question is because, although very remote & can't be more desert if you tried, is extremely beautiful. I have many photos, in fact over 300 of this particular place and am finding it difficult to narrow down to just a few.

It was first visited by the Portuguese around 1486, founded in 1793 by the Cape Dutch and claimed by the Germans in 1884 who called it German South West Africa.  The closest town is a little further north on the coast called Swakopmund (trying saying that after a couple of South African wines, even before) and was founded by the Germans in 1892. It does have a further history with the British being involved, then being part of South Africa and after many years of struggle was finally given back to Namibia in 1994 by president F.W. De Klerk, 30 years after the UN voted to end South Africa's mandate but I won't bore the reader with such details.

Walvis Bay is right at the edge of the Namib desert, apparently the oldest desert in the world. It has an annual rainfall of just 10mls so water is a constant problem.  The ice cold Benguela current of the Atlantic Ocean flows along this coast and as it hits the warm winds of the desert creates pea soup fog of which we encountered and slowed our journey so we arrived in port 2 hours late, having not made up any time from our late departure of the last port.

Getting off the ship was a bit of a nightmare as customs came onboard and insisted on a face to face clearance which slowed the whole disembarkation down but nonetheless we got off and met our guide, Juan, for the day. We were joined by two other women from Canada, one who had a fear of heights and was insistent that we didn't go over any high sand dunes. A bit of a tall order considering that was what the whole tour was about.

We traveled in a very nice 4x4 Land Rover, our guide was very experienced and a great driver so luckily Miss Nervous settled down for awhile. First stop was the town lagoon, the largest single area of shallow water on the west African coast. It is here that up to 60,000 birds come to enjoy the waters, feed and do whatever birds do. The majority of these birds are flamingoes and wow, what an amazing sight, thousands of flamingos stretching out like a river of pink. Of course we have seen flamingos before but never like this, it was just incredible. There is a wide promenade following the edge of the lagoon where people were walking their dogs or just standing watching this unbelievable sight.

We then headed into the desert, it was still very misty and the ocean was very rough. Our destination was Sandwich Harbour and to get to it there is a narrow piece of beach between the high dunes of the Namib desert and the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Our guide was sure he could get us there but very undecided if he could get us back as the waves were closing in on the gap and the fog wasn't clearing. It's always a worry when even your guide doesn't know.

Needless to say he braved it and we were rewarded by some incredible sights. The sand dunes were so beautiful, almost impossible to photograph and the pictures certainly don't do it justice. It is an experience that you have to do yourself to appreciate what I'm trying to describe. They have been shaped by the strong winds here, constantly changing with steep sides plunging into valleys and soaring up to thin peaks. By now the mist had cleared and the skies were so blue with the backdrop of the sand leading onto the deeper blue of the sea. Even though it was desert there was still some very hardy green plants whose thick roots went deep into the sand to access the water table below and helped to anchor the sand dunes into place. There was also a lot of animal tracks in the sand of which Juan identified hyena, jackal, ostrich and springbok to name just a few. We did see two jackal on the beach just near a very stinky whale carcass and also a couple of springbok, this time not in a hamburger, further up the dunes.  Our guide said it was too windy to see many of the animals as they tend to go into hiding in this type of weather.

Going over the blind tops of the dunes was particular exciting, especially for Miss Nervous who elicited a couple of screams but he was very good and went slow so there was no flying in the air like we had told her there would be, just for fun.

The last part of the desert trip was overlooking the salt works which stretched for 50kms looking very impressive with its white mounds of salt and pink lakes.

Juan took us into the town of Swakopmund even tho it wasn't really a part of our tour so it was good to see. This architecture is late 19th early 20th century German style throughout the town, not as nice as the Dutch colonial like Cape Town but interesting, as well as the more modern style buildings. Down by the beach were the very exclusive sub division houses belonging to the wealthy and also a brand new complex housing 5 different restaurants, all of which looked amazing. Juan was quite proud of the fact that in the summer time the sea temps reached a dizzyingly 20 deg, a great time to go swimming he thought. Not quite my idea of great swimming.  He also took us to the less salubrious side of town where thousands lived in whatever construction they could make out of materials available. There is no electricity so at night it's pitch dark and he wasn't sure how they even cooked their dinner as any kind of wood is used to make housing and gas and coal were too expensive. There were some water points in various places which were coin operated so you needed money and possibly a long walk to get water. In the words of Fred Dagg, you don't know how lucky you are mate.

Juan got us back to the boat about 5 minutes before the gangway was drawn up, we were literally the last on board so not a minute was wasted in this most remote and amazing port.