Windhoek and on to the Skeleton Coast

After our drive along the western end of the Caprivi strip, so called after Heligoland Zanzibar treaty of 1890 whereby we (theBrits) gave Germany access to the East coast of Africa along a thin strip of land along the Zambezi in exchange for their rights to Zanzibar and Heligoland in the North Sea. We headed south to Windhoek and the Villa Verdi Hotel for a couple of nights to celebrate my birthday stopping off at the Hoba Meteorite the largest on earth.

Lucy on the meteorite

We arrived at the hotel clutching our “voucher” and confirmation…….but no room. Lovely conversation with Cathy in the USA who apologized (unheard of in customer service and admitted the error …again unheard of ) and offered us a room at the Hilton at no extra charge. Result…… and well done Hotels.com we will use you again and certainly recommend you to anyone who asks. Mistakes happen and its lovely when they are sorted efficiently and apologies made.

From Windhoek we took the Trans Kalahari highway to Swakopmund

Long drive through miles of nothing but along wonderful tar roads, we stayed the first night in the concrete jungle of Alte Brucke which was a building site, before moving to the much nicer Desert Sky. We had lunch at the Tug restaurant oysters and wine…. and did some tourist shopping drove down to Walvis Bay and past Dune 7 ( apparently the highest in the world but looked fairly tame compared to some of the ones we saw in the Western Sahara …must be how they measure them)

From there north via two lovely new friends Herman and Elna in Henties Bay who we met in Zambia and who told us to get in touch when we got close. We did and had a lovely Sunday lunch with them. Then on to the seal colony at Cape Cross …apparently one of the largest seal colonies on the planet. Certainly the smelliest!




Amazing to see hear…. and smell… I can see why there is such controversy about culling seals they look gorgeous, Cape seals have lovely little ears but adults consume 250kg of fish per year and there are hundreds of thousands in this one colony and the water for miles around is brown/green with shit. Cant understand why they dont spread out, must be the animal equivalent of Mumbai which is apparently the largest city in the world by population density rather than Tokyo which has the most populous urban area!
We saw the beautiful colours of the lichen fields which are an amazing example of symbiosis between two living things an alga and a fungus.The fungus absorbs moisture from the air and the alga contains the chlorophyll …


How anything can live in this desolate environment is a miracle!
And of course as it was the Skeleton Coast we saw the ship wrecks.

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