The wasteland

12 October

Today we left after an early breakfast for another long four hour dirt-road drive to Swakopmund on the coast. We soon spotted mountain zebras in the hills to the right of the road, which was a good start. After leaving the red dunes behind and winding down through the dramatic black hills, the desert starts to become something of a monotonous wasteland. Flat, sandy, occasionally rocky, odd bits of vegetation. Driving is dull and straight, but you can’t let your concentration drift on a dirt road so you’ve got to attend to it. As you reach the coast at Walvis Bay it becomes even more bleak – the empty yellow dunes are scratched by tyre tracks and are dotted here and there with just enough signs of industry or rubbish that it begins to look more like a post-apocalyptic no-mans-land. Sometimes bleakness can be stark and beautiful, but I confess I think I’d go mad if I spent more than a couple of days in these towns surrounded by mile after mile of barren nothing.

We’re staying in a hotel! It’s got a TV and everything! Okay, it hasn’t got any source of heat, and the evenings here are cold. Hmf. We have had the best meal of our trip though, at a restaurant called The Tug along the seafront. It genuinely is built around the hull of an old tug boat, which is rather cool. And they cook excellent seafood at awesome Namibian prices. Ten quid for a monkfish tail, Cajun blackened to spicy perfection.

In the afternoon we explored the lagoon and salt pans of Walvis Bay – more astonishing flat bleakness, on a weird road that feels like an endless causeway just above the watermark, though no sign of any jackals or hyena. Walvis Bay does have its share of scavengers, though. Parking attendants who get all friendly and ask your name… so that when you return to your car they can try and guilt-sell you a small round nut that has been lovingly carved with a wonky rhino and your name. Or beggars who simply pretend to be parking attendants and ask for money for “looking after your car” even though they were nowhere to be seen when you parked it. This is what comes of being the only seaside resort in Namibia!

Sunset found us by chance driving up the streambed of the Swakop River, inland from Swakopmund, as we took a wrong turn while looking for some apparently interesting canyons. This was a strangely beautiful place, the ground covered in dried up mud that curled like giant chocolate shavings. And we actually got to see the sun set, even though twenty kilometers back at the coast Swakopmund was lurking under a blanket of sea mist at a chilly 10 degrees. Strange weather.

Overall, a pretty quiet day, low on highlights.

Related Images:

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 28th, 2017 at 7:22 pm and is filed under Namibia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.