Drive through moonland to Swakopmund, a German seaside town

Another old one. Internet is infrequently available and slow.

Leaving Halali and Etosha (sadly), we took a slow 2 ½ hour morning drive back through Etosha to the main gates, stopping again at waterholes and trying to find the pride of lions we'd heard people had seen along this stretch the day before. No luck there, but saw some more mongooses (ok i've looked that one up) and the usual zebras and antelope. Every time we see a zebra we think it's something else ranging from an unidentified brown horsey thing (!), lion, rhino, wildebeest - so we've learnt to now just assume it's zebra until proven otherwise.  Turns out zebras are amazingly well camouflaged and can blend really well with the colour of their surroundings - who would have thought hey knew what they were doing with all those crazy stripes?!

Beautiful clouds on the way back through Etosha.

Longish drive to Swakop, but great tarred roads once out of Etosha. The last stretch was a crazy moonish landscape with a whole lot of yellow/brown deserty nothing. Was funny to think this was leading us to the sea. 

Arrived in good time at our lovely guest house and had a view of the sea not far off. While checking in we asked about the weather tomorrow, and the owner commented that one can never tell in Swakop as it is entirely unpredictable. About 5 minutes later and a huge fog rolled in - no more sea to be seen! The choice of activities was either sea-based or desert-based (eg sandboarding, quad biking). We decided to book a sea trip the next day regardless of the fog, since we were on the sea and we'd see more desert at Sesriem.  Sandboarding was a close runner up but I decided I could do without a twisted knee at the start of our trip.

Fog was still heavily over the town the next day and it was really cold on our boat trip, which left from 20 minutes down the road at Walvis Bay (means something to do with Whales). Still a fun trip – they had a seal that jumped on board, plus we saw a seal colony and dolphins playing near the boat. They cleverly served bottomless glasses of sherry and champers which made everyone forget about the cold.

That afternoon , as the sun tried to peek through the fog, we visited Wlotskaspaken, a funny little .. hamlet I guess you might call it... (but that might rely on a church...vague memory of trivia questions!).. about 20 kms north of swakop. It's a very unusual place, again moonlike type landscape but just by the sea where the sand has purple swirls through it.

There's no power and the beach shacks are dotted around and painted in bright colours with water tanks on top. Some of the people we met in Windhoek that Dad was on the Cape to Cairo trip with, Dave and his daughter Sarah, were having a weekend in their house there and invited us to come visit. The town is as big as it's going to get as they aren't selling any more land or houses - houses are generally passed down through generations and there are rarely any up for sale. Consequently it is fairly highly sought after and little run down beach shacks go for way too much on the odd occasion they do come up for sale.

Good day, albeit little of it actually spent in Swakop! Next day, Sesreim.