Walvis Bay is a fairly small, but busy industrial port. Most of the 50,000 residents work in the port area, but there is also a sizeable fishing fleet and a local operation extracts salt from seawater. A lagoon south of town is habitat for a large population of flamingos, pelicans, and other marine birds.
We docked in Walvis Bay early in the morning. We had signed up for a HAL tour, so met in the Queens Lounge at 7:30. We were on a bus by about 8:15, headed for the lagoon. We transferred from a small bus to 4 wheel drive vehicles, there were about 10 of them. Being on the first bus, we had our pick of vehicles so we headed immediately for the new Land Rover. The others were older jeep-like models. Our driver was older than the other young men drivers....he owned the company. He was born and raised in Walvis Bay so was able to give us a lot of information about the area. We passed by some beautiful homes on the bay, then headed south of town on gravel roads. They soon gave way to the beach or sand roads. For as far as we could see, there was sand. Huge dunes, smaller dunes with grass growing on them, just a lot of sand. At one point the top of the sand was pinkish red. Our driver said it was garnet, how pretty!
We stopped so people could climb a dune if they wanted. Mel went about half way up then came down on his behind. It was a steep climb. We stopped again at a small lagoon area that had a few flamingos in it, and a large dune behind it. Again, a number of people climbed it. We went off road and started going up and down the steep dunes, like we'd done outside of Dubai. It was quite fun, and nice to be in the comfort of a Land Rover. Our driver headed out into the sand at one point to pee. After that I asked if there were any toilet facilities other than dunes. The answer was no. By then the dunes were 200' high, rather than the small ones he'd used to go. He pulled his vehicle a bit apart from the others and parked diagonally on the beach. That was the "ladies" room. Guess the fish wouldn't watch.
We stopped by a group of fisherman. They were fishing for shark. There were several guides, giving that as a tour. One had a shark on the line. While we watched, he pulled the shark into shore as close as he could while another man went into the water about waist deep to hook it and pull it in. It was just over a meter long from the tip of it's nose to the base of it's tail, quite large. They tagged it, then dragged it back into the water to let it go. I was glad of that. They catch them for sport, trying to beat the record for the largest caught.
After riding thru more dunes, we stopped in the middle of them and had lunch. While they set up a tent and hauled out tables and chairs, complete with tablecloths, Mel and I headed up the highest dune. It was quite a climb. All you could see from up there was sand on one side, ocean on the other. We were served oysters and champagne, then plates of finger foods, like meat balls, fish balls, calamari and quiche. It was quite good, and fun to eat in the middle of the dunes. They put everything away and off we went again, driving down very steep dunes and racing up the next one. A lot of fun. We arrived back at port at 3:10, all aboard was at 3:30. We had just a few minutes to walk back to the port entrance to where some vendors had set up. We were kind of looking for a large giraffe but came home with a fat wood rhino instead. A group of children from a local orphanage was on the pier singing to us as we were supposed to sail away. The ship's dentist had been injured in an ATV accident in the dunes, and had to be disembarked, so we were late leaving port. He had a broken collarbone and several broken ribs after the vehicle stalled on a steep dune and flipped back on top of him. Hope he's OK.
Once we headed out to sea, it all of a sudden felt like we were really on the way home. We are going straight across the Atlantic up the northeastern coast of South America and will be back to Fort Lauderdale soon. With Africa behind us, it's really time. Amazing how fast this trip has gone by. I think we are finally ready to come home.
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