It was a nice change to not be getting up to the alarm and piling back on the bus today. It has been non-stop action since we arrived in Cape Town almost 2 weeks ago.
As I mentioned yesterday, Swakopmund is a beach town along the “Skeleton coast” of Namibia, so-called because of all the ship wrecks that can be found here. The coastline is unprotected from the Atlantic and its storms and the water is cold the whole year. It is now winter and cool, so the town is quite quiet, but it looks like it would be hopping with beach goers in their summer months.
Our hotel is near the southern end of the main beach road within easy walking distance of downtown, the market, etc. It’s also one of the most modern we’ve experienced and thankfully had great wifi in the lobby area. Wet rooms seem to be the big thing in hotel rooms these days where all the bathroom facilities are in one open room.
Once we had cleaned up, dropped off our laundry, and had breakfast we walked along the beach road to the main drag named after Namibia independence hero Sam Nujoma. We stopped in at the pharmacy, Pick and Pay, a grocery store chain, and tried, unsuccessfully, to take out some money. My bank card is not working in Namibia for some reason and so Nanci has loaned me some money for this leg of the trip. I have some US cash which I’ll be able to exchange in Windhoek if I still can’t access my accounts, and I’ll put as much on my cards as I can. We’ve had a bit of bad luck in that regard as Nanci’s credit card is not working here either.
We wandered the Main Street and looked in a few of the many shops hoping for some of our tourist dollars. They did librate a few of my Namibian dollars for an Africa print runner for my dining table. We discovered that it’s a national holiday called Hero’s Day. It to celebrate the heros that worked toward Namibia’s independence, most recently from the South Africans who had been given control of Namibia after the Second World War. This meant that many of the shops were either closed or closing early, but we got what we needed before that happened.
We headed toward the market area to see what they had for sale there, and midway there we encountered the guinea hens that we’d seen yesterday on our way in. It was quite funny yesterday to see them scurrying across the road, obediently in a pedestrian walkway. Today they were busy scratching at the earth looking for their dinner and didn’t take any notice of us.
From here we walked toward the lighthouse, because of course I needed to have a picture of it! But it wasn’t that interesting and so a quick snap had us off the the market.
The products for sale in the market were pretty much the same as we’ve seen elsewhere, and so we quickly made our way out to the beach walk, to avoid the ongoing interest of the venders. We wandered along the water and went for a stroll out onto a pier with a restaurant at the end and fishermen along one side. I felt somewhat like I was back in Southern California.
We went back to our hotel where we basically crashed for the rest of the day, although we headed out for lunch to a beach restaurant that looked to be a happening place in the summer. Today it had a few hardy customers seated next to the fireplace.
We did joint up with some of the rest of the group for a dinner of Indian food, after our attempt at eating local was dashed because the restaurant one of the group had researched had closed a couple of years ago. So had a second choice. It had a standard offering of Indian dishes and the food was excellent and so was the service.
Then it was home to bed but thankfully no early start for tomorrow. A very respectable departure time of 9 pm since we didn’t have far to go.
Lois' Adventures 