The Internet Tour of Namibia - Skeleton Coast
…continued from the previous post. If you want to start from the beginning of this series, start here.
Andrew had set up our Namibian Internet-Hunting Odyssey to accommodate about 6 hours of exploring and 6 hours of work per day. This felt like a manageable pace. So, the next morning, we had only a four hour drive to the next location with manageable internet: Swapkopmnd. This gave us an extra hour or two to sit by the fire and enjoy a slow morning coffee before making the drive.
Once in the car, our path took us further north, then west to arrive on the coast. I’ve lived in desert areas my whole life, and one thing I already know and appreciate is that the desert’s stark emptiness take on is as beautiful as any alpine mountain, tropical beach, or misty jungle. There are more styles of “nothing” in this world than I realized: nothing but blue, nothing but green —- nothing but sand.
Walvis Bay and Swapkopmond
The approach Walvis seemed like what you might call an actual city. It even had a big round-about with multiple lanes! We could see the anchorage nearby and a row of nice restaurants overlooking the sea.
Here, we saw our first Himba person, one of Namibia's more interesting tribes. She had a craft hut built along the edge of the tourist restaurant district, and she sat beading an item of jewelry. There were quite a number of people selling trinkets and tourist knickknacks in that area and for the first time in all our Namibian travels we got chased by a knickknack salesman. This distracted us, and in our attempt to flee I never got the chance to meet the Himba woman. A shame, too, because I knew Andrew and I wouldn't have time to make it far enough North/inland to meet the Himba people where they live.
I didn’t get a photo that day, but this photo that I purchased from Getty Images depicts a Himba woman much like the person I saw - with her hair sculpted by red clay, her clothing made of leather from the cows their tribe tends and seeds and bead adornments they design themselves. They are known to cleanse themselves not with water, but with red sand and oil. With this regimen, their skin glows red.
Not sure I'd let Andrew visit their heartland, anyway.
Why?
Well, if you go to visit the Himba tribe, they will apparently provide you with a wife for the night, and it’s somewhat rude to decline.
Walvis and Swapkopmond are the two largest cities on Namibia's "Skeleton Coast”. Named Skeleton Coast for the shipwreck Skeletons that adorn the whole coastline, it is a place where the fog grows so thick you cannot see in front of your nose and the sand dunes fall directly into the sea. The two little cities felt like a fairly typical city, but the scenery around them was unique. We have not been many places where the sand dunes meet the ocean quite like this. At high tide, you can’t drive along the beach. The ocean rolls right up to the feet of these massive dunes.
We stayed in Swapkopmond two nights, and it had an eerie feel to it for a couple reasons. First, the area is always a bit eerie with the fog rolling in off the sea, shrouding the land and hiding it from unsuspecting mariners. It’s another one of those coasts that receive more than its fair share of shipwrecks. The fog would roll in and clear intermittently, even as we made this drive.
To the left, desert enveloped in fog.
To our right….shipwrecks at sea.
The second reason our time in Swapkopmond felt eerie was the full blood moon scheduled to rise that night. I longed to get a photograph of it over dunes, but where we were located, it would not be red until it was setting out to sea. So, I settled for a normal full moon over dunes, and then woke early to wander down the street and see the red moon hanging over the horizon.
…And, please enjoy this terrible, blurry photograph as evidence that the blood moon did happen in the wee-hours the next morning.
Andrew and I returned from our blood-moon viewing with the chill of Namibian fog still clinging to our bodies. The woman who ran our little hotel sniffed us and asked where we’d been so early in the morning. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, and then we confirmed her fears: “Did you see the moon this morning?”
She leaned away from us as if we, ourselves, were covered in moon-blood. She shuddered, and then scurried away. We shrugged, and went to fill our coffee mugs. A second host arrived to bustle around our breakfast table with little plates for our toast and a tiny bowl filled with balls of flavorful butter. “I heard you went to look at the moon this morning,” she said.
“Yes!” I said, “did you see it too?” But again, she shuddered and shook her head with vigor.
“No way,” she said, “I drove as fast as I could to get here this morning, “I do not like it at all.” She paused looked up to the sky as if she could see through the ceiling, and then looked back to us, “That moon just ain’t right.”
Duly noted.
Our breakfast was vast with options, and fresh squeezed oranges. We enjoyed, and then set out for our daily adventures: a trip to see the “Pink Lakes” and some Flamingos.
…SOME FLAMINGOS!?
Enormous flocks of pink flamingos, as far as the eye could see. They own these tidal flats, wandering in gangs and creating brilliant pink streaks of color in the sky. Clearly, something in the water there attracts them for their food supply.
Driving through the flamingos, we follow our noses to one of Namibia’s industrial productions: salt.
Apparently, the “pink lakes” we were promised are actually salt ponds where sea water is evaporated away leaving behind salt and whatever it is that makes these flamingos so pink!
If you “are what you eat, and what you it is pink…” Apparently, you will be pink.
Even the jellyfish were pink.
With so many Flamingos, pink feathers flutter to the beaches like snowflakes. I spent a whole day collecting a pile of pink feathers. “I’m going to build Katherine Hepburn a new feather toy!” I declared when Andrew looked at me askance, a fistful of feathers clutched in my own paw.
We needed some kind of peace offering, as we were receiving daily updates from Matt and Amy on Florence, letting us know that Kitty is becoming irascible, causing mischief, and stepping on Matt’s keyboard every time he wanted to edit videos.
We were only half way through our road trip.
This is her “Full of Mischief Face”
“What should we bring Mattais when we go to dinner?" I asked Andrew as we contemplated the next leg of our trip.
“I don't know," Andrew said. “Maybe I'll just ask."
It's always a bit of mystery what we are getting ourselves into when we go to dinner with new friends. Hospitality culture is not the same across the world, and we've found ourselves in awkward situations waiting for our friends to eat with us while they wait for us to eat first, etc. (French Polynesia, for example). We've learned to ask.
“Hi Mattais, we are still looking forward to dinner at your place. But, where we are from, we would usually bring a gift to the host - maybe a bottle of wine or flowers. Is that something you do here as well? If so, what can we bring?”
Mattais texted back to say, yes that is something they do here as well and asked us to give him some time to think. "Are you traveling as far north as Etosha?" he asked.
We had hemmed and hawed about whether or not to make the extra jaunt out to Etosha. Etosha is Namibia's National Park and the best place to see The Big Five in Namibia. We hadn't yet seen a Rhinoceros up close, and we heard Namibia has plenty of those to see in Etosha. But it would add two+ days of driving to get there.
“If you are going to Etosha," Mattais said, “on your way back south to Windoek there is a man who sells nice Sour Milk and dried meat. That would be the perfect thing to bring to dinner."
“Perfect!" we said.
We needed an excuse to go all the way to Etosha. Sour milk and dried meat seemed as good as any.
...to be continued...