100 Miles of Bad Road

At least it felt like 100 miles! We were in Walvis Bay, Namibia today. We had a lagoon boat tour scheduled but because of our delayed schedule, all tours were canceled. Instead we had one tour for anyone who wanted to go. No reservations, just show up. I think there were close to 300 people who went. It turned out to be a much nicer trip than we thought-except for that washboard road.

First we had to meet in the theater by 3:00 PM to go through face to face immigration again. Today it went much more smoothly than last time. We were off the ship and into our vehicles by 4:00. Instead of buses, there were at least 60 four wheel drive vehicles. We soon found out why. Off we went with Peter, our driver. First we stopped at the lagoon to see the flamingos and pelicans. The pelicans were pretty far away but there were several flamingos in front of us. Then we drove around the lagoon and saw hundreds of them. The photo I posted is actually a short video of a dancing flamingo. I hope you can play it. We were quite impressed with the beautiful homes we passed by in the city. Peter told us the area used to be military. When the base closed, they built homes, so they were all relatively new. From the lagoon, we headed out to the desert. We stopped for a photo op at the word’s tallest dune, named Dune 7. It is pretty darn big. If you look carefully at my picture, you can see 2 people walking up the dune. They look pretty small.
‘From there we went along a nice highway past several more dunes. Then we turned off onto a washboard road. Driving along in a convoy sure made lots of dust. I wish I could have seen us from afar. First we stopped at Valley of the Moon. It’s supposed to resemble the moon’s surface. We took photos there, then back on the road to the next stop. It was supposed to be 4 kilometers down the road. We must have gone 20 km before the 5 cars in our group stopped. We had passed the turn. So it was 20 more km of bad road back to the turn off. Then we went down that road, through an oasis and missed the turn again. We stopped by some road workers and asked them where to go. This was all in Africaans so we didn’t understand a thing. We turned around and finally found the turn off. We went into a wide canyon and parked along with 60 other cars and 1 bus. We had finally found it! There were tables set up with cheese and cracker plates, a marimba band was playing. People were climbing up the two hills surrounding us. There were 2 bars, one with champagne or a full bar with beer, wine or mixed drinks. I had a strawberry gin and tonic. It was quite refreshing. I don’t know how they organized this in 1 day. We were there to watch the sunset. It was pretty spectacular, setting behind a mountain to the west. We left soon after sunset and drove the washboard again, just not so far, then back on the highway which went past the dunes that we couldn’t see in the dark. We were back at the ship by 8:30. We had a late dinner and back to the room.
‘We were all very happy with the day, in spite of the delayed arrival. I am just amazed at how the excursion department can make things happen in literally one day. Kudos to them.
‘Photos: Marimba band, singers and dancers, rock climbers, dune 7, try to find the people, moon valley, sunset, Ben, Beryl and Bunny, new moon and back to our beautiful ship all lit up.

Now we have 7 days at sea while we go up the west coast of Africa. Next stop is Dakar, Senegal. I may not post every day since every sea day is pretty much the same. I will include more dune pix.