Swakopmund/Walvis Bay

Now it was time to hit the coast again. We’ve heard and read a lot about Swakopmund, a town with a reputation of being “more German  than the Germans”. And indeed it looked a bit like Germany 20 years ago. An old-stylish bakery, lots of German names on business signs and everything was shut on Saturday afternoon, it was even dead. Except one little street in which the “Swakopmunder Karnevalsverein” celebrated whatever carnival there is to celebrate in late May… And it was cold, cloudy, just uncormfortable. The wind from the sea was strong and cold and it wasn’t inviting at all to do anything outdoors. Unfortunately when camping everything is outdoors so we entered a restaurant for dinner (and watching Champions League final), got our clothes washed and dediced to leave the next morning. But then we learnt about Jeanne’s sea-kayaking tours and we decided to do this the next morning. That was a great decision!

Very early and chilled to the bone we started with a group of people to drive to Pelican Point where we should go out in the kayaks. We saw lots of flamingos and other water birds at the lagoon and a few jackals which feed from the flamingos. And as there are so many of them and they are not the smartest or fastest birds, the jackals pretty much kill as many as they please, have a bite here, a bite there and the lagoon was covered with lots of flamingo body-parts… nothing to be sad about our guide Jeanne told us, as nature will sort out the rest.

 

Once in the kayaks we visited a seal colony, or better, the seal colony visited US! There were thousands of seals in that colony and it felt like all of them hopped in the water to examine our kayaks, play with the paddles or just jump dolphin-like along. They didn’t get tired of us and we paddled around and played with them (especially the younger seals were curious). After 90minutes of seals we wanted to see the dolphins, but we couldn’t spot more than the fins and had to accept, that dolphins didn’t want to play with slow kayaks, they prefer faster motorboats… However, the seal-experience was simply unique and even though it was foggy, windy and cold, we weren’t that cold anymore and could even enjoy the picnic on the beach.

After that we decided we’ve had enough of the coast, warmed up while sandboarding (or at least trying) in the dunes, just a few kilometers inland and then headed off to something warmer and sunnier.