Namibia Road Trip (continued...)

Lüderitz, Namibia. Monday 9^th March.

Well we got back to Gráinne and she's still floating. Tao 8 were here to wave a welcome – they're now moored just off our stern having arrived from Cape Town while we were away. It's kindof nice to be back, Lüderitz is feeling a bit like home. There's a new big ship in that's just starting to load lots of something or other this morning. It looks like we'll have a weather window to leave on Thursday or Friday (the 13th!) this week so the next few days will be back to busy preparations.

Now I'll bore you with the rest of our brilliant Namibia trip, there's absolutely no sailing in this bit, just a shameless collection of holiday photos. You have been warned. Namibia has been really gorgeous. It's a big country by area but with only about 2.5 million population and most of them in the far north. We've passed through mainly very small rural villages and very large agricultural properties. And the occasional half decent sized town. And lots of beautiful landscapes and fabulous wildlife. There's certainly poverty here but crime doesn't seem to be a huge issue outside the main cities. For a pretty new country they seem to be doing a decent job of running things and for such a small country (population-wise) it looks like they doing very good job in maximising their tourism industry. Beef is their other big export. And the diamonds of course but I guess De Beers are the ones who see most of that money.

A typical collection of informal housing (or township) outside every town - a relic of apartheid.

The cattle farms the road passes through were so pretty I could almost become a farmer.

So after our chillin' at Kalahari Bush Breaks Lodge (see previous blog) we drove back westwards to the Erindi Private Game Reserve for a further touch of the African safari experience. Erindi was a cattle property back in the 70s and 80s but was overgrazed and not doing too well so they ditched the cattle and repopulated the property with the wildlife that would have originally been there. Then for a while it was a hunting destination but more recently they've decided to charge the tourists to look at the wildlife rather than shoot it, which suits us better. We stayed in our own little chalet at Camp Elephant which is comfortingly surrounded by electric fences to stop the locals eating the tourists. The only other place to stay in the reserve is the fancy Old Traders' Lodge, which is so expensive I thought they'd accidentally added a zero to the price, and where you're not allowed anywhere near if you're not staying there. So we stayed in the plebs area. 

Our pad at Erindi.

The chalets half surround a waterhole so from your patio you get to watch the springboks springing (they really do spring!) while you braai (bbq). The Namibians seem even more braai crazy than the South Africans and they thought we probably needed two braais in our chalet. Actually they were right, we used one to cook on and one to sit around after dinner. 

Evening wildlife spotting while we braai.

Namibian firelighters: a wick, surrounded by wood and held together with magic flammable glue.

Karl makes fire, Kara makes dinner.

The after-dinner braai area. Forgot to bring marshmallows though.

My morning spot by the waterhole in front of our chalet.

Viewing wildlife while still in my pyjamas and with a mug of freshly brewed coffee, it doesn't get any better.

Then safari time. After our experience with a guided game drive in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi (South Africa back in November) we felt confident we knew what to do: don't drive too quickly, keep your eyes peeled, stop when you spot something, keep quiet, turn off the engine maybe and just whisper, try to sound as much as possible like David Attenborough. So this time it was just the two of us and our trusty bakkie. And it was brilliant. First of all just driving around admiring the scenery would have been plenty even without seeing any wildlife at all. But there was lots of wildlife. We saw zebra, loads of antelope, giraffe, hogs, ostrich, hippos from a distance (like normal hippos only smaller), buffalo/wildebeest thingies (this is where a guide may have been useful), mini-Bambies (probably not the technical term), tortoises, very pretty birds and loads and loads of beetles again.

Go for a drive.

Keep your eyes peeled.

Stalk a waterhole.

A mini-Bambi. They're the cutest little things, they're only about knee-high.

Highlight of the day was rounding a bend in the road to be confronted head on by an elephant. The world's biggest elephant. Coming straight for us. Now, if we hadn't had our chaperoned encounter with elephants in Hluhluwe I would have been absolutely petrified at this point as opposed to merely fairly alarmed. We stopped, he didn't. We started to slowly reverse, he peed and pooed all over the place but kept coming. We felt very, very small and our bakkie suddenly seemed a very flimsy sort of protection. We stopped (“don't encourage him to charge!” said Karl helpfully). He stopped, had a look around, started nibbling on some shrubs, had another think about this obstruction in the middle of the road, decided he could maybe go around us instead of ploughing straight into us and went on his way. Phew!

$#^%!!!!!

He just kept coming.

"Mmmm, I think I'll nibble some shrub".

"Maybe I could go AROUND the white grumbling thing".

My new favourite view of an elephant: in the rear-view mirror walking away.

Next we drove from Erindi to the coastal resort town of Swakopmund. More gorgeous and ever-changing scenery along the way. Swakopmund was the Big Smoke of Namibia in the early days when it was the main port (it's a rubbish port but the British/South Africans had the other one at Walvis Bay) but once the railway went inland to Windhoek (now the Capital) it slowed its pace to that of a quiet European holiday town. A very pleasant little spot with again that very obvious early German colonial influence. And loads of German tourists like everywhere else in Namibia. In fact, the default position seems to be to assume you're German, we got lots of Güten Morgens. So we did what any self-respecting tourist does: strolled along the coast, drove down to the yacht club at Walvis Bay, watched the sunset from our balcony and took advantage of having an oven that actually gets hot enough to properly crisp roast potatoes.

The Gross Spitzkoppe and Klein Spitzkoppe.

Pulled in for a picnic lunch. Just as we were finishing up another car pulled up not 20m away - seriously? There's nothing for miles!!!!!!!! Go find your own picnic spot.

Swakop architecture.

The former military hospital, now a hotel.

The former German army barracks, now a YHA hostel.

A hotel that's still a hotel.

This one we stopped at.

Our seaside digs in Swakop, spot me on the balcony.

And all of this is in the desert where Karl found some dunes to climb.

Dipping my toes in the chilly Atlantic at Walvis Bay.

After Swakopmund we had a stop in the capital Windhoek (home of Windhoek Draught – the least bad ordinary beer in southern Africa). There's not a lot in Windhoek. We had lunch in a cafe by the park with good people-watching of city workers having their lunchtime picnics and naps. Then we saw the church and the parliament building. Then went to a camping shop to buy an extra water jerrycan for the boat. Then we kindof ran out of things to do and were grateful that it was almost dinnertime (“malzeit!” yells Karl regularly now). 

Lounging around in the park is one of the few things to do in Windhoek.

View of the church from the gardens of parliament house.

It's a long drive back from Windhoek to Lüderitz so we broke the journey at a tiny little village in the desert. We stayed at the Bahnhof Hotel which is humourously (we assume) billed as “the best hotel in Aus” - Aus contains a church, a police station, a petrol station, one hotel and a smattering of houses. And it's pronounced “yowce” which is a great name. And the hotel staff are so happy that one of the waitresses sings constantly. In an almost-repeat of the Tangalooma honeymoon emergency Karl panicked that he was about to die from chocolate poisoning after over-ordering on the dessert. But he survived.

And finally back to Lüderitz via a deserted former diamond mining town dating from the early 20th century that was abandoned in the 50s. A very interesting little spot. 

Karl explores Kolmanskop.

They even had a bowling alley back in the day.

What happens in the desert if you abandon your house.

When we got back to Lüderitz we piled all our stuff in the corner of the yacht club while we had lunch and waited for our lift back to Gráinne. There was a German-Namibian family anniversary celebration on so some singing, some bell ringing and some schnapps drinking was happening. And they made sure we didn't leave without taking some of the too much cake they had all brought.

Now that it's autumn in the southern hemisphere it must be time to swap over to the north and continue to outrun winter (and Covid-19). So now we'll keep heading west across the Atlantic where, conveniently, the hops from island to island include built-in two week isolation periods so hopefully no-one turns us away for fear of infection when we arrive. And we get Paddy's Day at sea! Don't know what Paddy would make of that.

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