To the sea

We're up early again (have I mentioned there is no sleeping late on this tour??), breakfast, pack up and a short drive to Walvis Bay. We have reached the ocean and it's excellent!

Walvis Bay often has flocks of flamingos but they have not arrived yet. We drive past some seriously high end beach front homes that look like they would be found closer to Miami than the Skeleton Coast.

This stretch of coastline is called the Skeleton Coast because it is a treacherous bit of shoreline and, if a ship grounded or wrecked, even if the sailors managed to survive and make it to shore they were met with a vast desert that stretched on for miles. It's likely that they would have had a quicker passing if they'd died in the wreck.

We drove on to Swakopmund where we'll be spending two nights in the Dune Hostel (located on Lebowski Drive... DUDE!!). We're booked to share a dorm room with Paul and Melissa. We'd all like a bit of a break so Brad and I book a night across the road in the Prinzessin Rupprecht Heim Hotel and Paul and Melissa will stay there on the second night. This will give us all a chance to have some alone time and relax in a nice hotel.

The hostel is nice enough and the bunk beds are a welcome break from the tents but the hotel is even better. The hotel is actually a retirement home with small buildings in the back nestled in the beautiful gardens. The main front building - where the hotel rooms are - was a German military hospital in the 20's. This means that the rooms are nicely spacious and the doors are big enough to wheel hospital beds through.

We headed back to the hostel for our Activity Briefing where we get to find out about all the fun things there are in town for us to spend more money on. There's sand surfing, sky diving, paragliding, township tours, quad bike riding, horseback riding and dolpin cruising. You name it, they've got it. Brad decided to take the next couple of days to relax and chill out. Me? I can't turn down the chance to go on a boat ride so I'm checking out the dolphins on Saturday morning.

We dropped off some laundry at the front desk and go for a stroll around town to check out the shops and cafes. This is very much a tourism driven town. Its filled with adventure stores, souvenir shops, bars and cafes. All the travel outfitting stores seem to be filled with clothing by Jeep and Bilabong. Weird.

We strolled down to the beach to take a photo (our hostel/hotel is only 3 doors up from the beachfront). We are immediately accosted by the local scam. A guy selling nuts that have a leather thong attached (key chain-ish). They are carved with giraffes, elephants, etc. He says hello and is friendly asking where you are from and what your name is. Of course, then he asks how you spell that - not very good English and all. If you tell him, he starts to carve your name in the nut with a small exacto blade to guilt you into buying it. I gave him an "H" and then realized what he was doing and told him to forget it. All I wanted was to take a photo of the waves but my camera battery took that exact opportunity to konk out. He kept talking away about his poor daughters and school fees and give you a good deal and how he carves them all himself and all the work involved and blah, blah, blah... of course, if I decided to buy one in the shops they would be much more expensive and he'd sell to me for ONLY 80N. We were ignoring him and then he said maybe he'd give me for only 40N. I said OK but I didn't want my name on it, I wanted his (as the artist and all). He agreed and started carving away. At one point he mumbled something about maybe charging me 50N since it was his name and I told him to forget it, the agreed price was 40N. The next day I saw them in the shops for 18N. Ah well, he scammed me for $3CAD - I think I'll live and maybe he'll have a slightly better day.

We went to a cafe and hung out, did a bit of internetting and met the group back at the hostel for our dinner out. We walked to Cafe Napolitana. They serve several game meats and seem pretty popular. We all ordered something different so we could share and try them all. We tried Ostrich, Oryx and Springbok. They were all very tender and (sorry to say) very delicious! The Springbok was the best.

Some people went out to a local pub to have a few drinks. We decided to go and enjoy our hotel room.