This story is the continuation of my adventures in Namibia in June 2021. You can read the first part here 📖
After having an amazing Savannah experience in the Etosha National Park, we were headed to the coast to see some sea safari. At the coast we have the “The Skeleton Coast”, which is part of the Namib Desert and has an interesting story behind it. Of course I will tell you but don’t miss out the chance of seeing it by yourself!
On the way there, we eventually we needed to make a toilet break. We then just passed a village where kids were coming back from school… when out of a sudden, 4 lions were crossing the road simply right in front of us in Damaraland 😱😱😱 So yeah… toilet could wait a few minutes! 😳 🥵 we were just petrified inside the car while they went around our truck. Alana was surely afraid of getting eaten by them!
I could only think: “well… those big cats should be quite hungry in a such dry desert condition like these”. Fortunately they didn’t do anything (otherwise you would not be reading this post 😅). But WOW, this was definitely not expected at all, specially because we were far from any national park.
What would you have done if this happened to you? 👀🥩 We just hope that the school kids could have had the same luck we had…
So, after we recovered from the scare, we could finally drive towards the coast. Actually, the Skeleton Coast is even a National Park. It is decorated with shipwrecks and collapsed oil drilling rigs.
First of all, here is one of the fewest places on earth you can see the combination of water AND desert. According to the CNN Travel, the Portuguese sailors considered it to be “the gates of the hell”, since its waters are pretty wild! For many sailors, this was the end of the earth.
The reason behind all of its energy is the effects of the cold Benguela Current, which makes the coast foggy and causing ships to wreck. I first heard about this current while I was in Angola.
In case you know Greek mythology: maybe those winds are associated with the “Sirens” – the sea-nymphs who enchanted sailors by “singing to them”, leading them to their own death. Those creatures were winged beings, so there is indeed a correlation to the wind. Who knows?
The same way that the sailors didn’t see the deadly waters coming, we didn’t see the lions coming on the road. Life is full of surprises!
Oh, by the day! Thanks for the (late) warning! 😅 we already found that out!
The coast of Namibia is still a very nice dry area (dry mountains) with the big desert along with the beautiful sand dunes. There we visited the famous Cape Cross Seal Reserve. There might be around 30 thousand of those little guys living there – if not more! They might look cute but their smell is simply disgusting. Sorry for breaking the mood!
Interesting in nature is to see that some lions and hyenas got specialized in eating seals, so they live near the shore. Basically an open bar party with all-you-can-eat, huh? 😅
After that, we drove towards the coastal city of Swakopmund in the middle of the Namib Desert. This city is a German town, with German buildings, German restaurants, German names of streets – therefore it is not a surprise that the lockdown fitted perfectly to the city! #darkhumorjokes #everyjokehasagrainoftruth. My fellow Germans will understand! 🍻 Prost auf Einsperrungen!
We arrived in the city in the evening and went for a walk around this town with a colonial heritage. It has a nice pier and a lighthouse as well!
Huh… no, I am not the lighthouse 😉 I am just a tall guy making taxes disappear and helping people to live how they want ⛵️🌍
The ships arrive here through the Walvis Bay, around 40km away from Swakopmund. This is where we were headed on the next day. What Swakopmund is German, Walvis Bay is British. The city even has its own international airport! Although the Portuguese arrived in the area around 1485, they never claimed the land to belong to them. Walvis Bay was later annexed by the Britain’s Cape Colony (which is now part of South Africa) in 1884.
Something really cool to do here is to book a catamaran trip to check up the whales 🐳 🐋 we came for the sea safari too!
The whales didn’t want to be seen on that day, I guess. But hey, some pelicans wanted to join us in the boat 🐥 Maybe they were interested in Champagne and Oysters for breakfast. Namibia farms oysters rapidly in its cold waters. They just need to reproduce them in tanks onshore.
Some dolphins came around too! 🐬 The Heaviside’s dolphin is the second smallest dolphin species favoring the cold waters of the Benguela current off the shore of Namibia.
Who would have thought: we also saw some penguins in Africa! 🐧 And don’t forget the seals! 😉
This is the touristic place where you can find the nice and big dunes! In the afternoon, we had a pretty wild dune ride! Well, it had to be wild to fit with the Skeleton Coast, right?
I simply L-O-V-E dune bashing! We went up and down the dunes so many times, as if we were drawing some cryptocurrency price charts! 🤪📈 📉
In the evening, we got back to our German hotel in Swakopmund. We need to get ready for the next day long drive 🥱 😴
We still have so much to explore here in Namibia – including the Namib Desert Park, more and more dunes, the city of Lüderitz (famous for the diamonds!), the Canyon down south, Kalahari Game Lodge in Windhoek…
We can meet in the next post! See you there! 👋🏻
