Swakopmund, Namibia

I was up early before the sun rose. Decided to stay up with the hopes of seeing a meerkat from our front balcony. The temperature was pleasant outside when I first got up but it was discernibly rising. By 7am it was already too hot in the sun. Didn’t see any meerkat.

Anyways we had breakfast, packed up and headed to Swakopmund. The hotel folks had suggested we check out the pink flamingoes along the way in Walvis Bay, with some vague directions. The guide book, Google maps and hotel all had different suggestions on exactly where to find them.

The drive was really scenic through the Kuiseb Canyon. About 30km outside Walvis Bay, the highway became a divided highway with two lanes each direction (and only us on the road).

First we tried going down the exit to Dune 7, a tall sand dune that visitors can climb. Supposedly there were flamingos nearby, but we didn’t see any.

Closer to town, Marissa navigated to get us to a ‘flamingo viewpoint’, according to her phone. Sure enough, there was a parking lot, boardwalk and hundreds of flamingos! Gave a tip to the car watcher (20 NAD) and got out of the car to get pics. It was then that the temperature change hit us. It was only 19C with a mist blowing in from the ocean, almost a 20C swing from Rostock. Brrr.

Our flamingo watching didn’t last long. Back in the car, turned the dial to heat, and continued onto Swakopmund. We took the more scenic B2 rather than the new highway a little inland.

Got to the Strand Hotel, the place to stay in Swakopmund. Marissa went in to reception to sort out parking etc. They seemed to be expecting us, which seemed odd. Then we remembered that our last hotel had asked us to deliver a bag left behind by other guests, who were also staying at the Strand. As I had mentioned, the place to stay :)

We cleaned up and headed down for lunch. It was nice to be back in an urban setting, although it’s not like we’ve been roughing it by any stretch.

At 3pm we headed to the lobby to meet the Sossusfly folks. We had booked an excursion to fly over the dunes, south to Sossusvlei and then over some ship wrecks on the way back. Heather and I had always wanted to do a flying safari along the Skeleton Coast, and this was a good way to get the same view.

We picked up another couple tourists who were doing a different flight. Got to the airport, security let us through the gate and we drove on the tarmac right beside the plane. I thought it was really cool, like a private jet experience :)

It was just the three of us in a little prop plane that seated five plus the pilot. She gave us the safety blurb and then we were off!

It was cool to retrace a bit of our path over the last couple days, this time from the air. The sand dunes are fractal and it’s hard to get scale, so just enjoyed the view. It was warm in the plane (I had thought it would be cooler at an altitude), almost hot.

Sossusvlei looked very different from the air, but we did recognize it. Flew back up along the coast. The ship wrecks were interesting, although hard to get pics in the slight turbulence. The large sand dunes dropping into the ocean were cool too. Reaching Swakopmund, we flew over stands of flamingos (another collective noun I had to look up). This was the highlight of the flight imo. I just took lots of pics and hoped some were in focus (only one turned out). The last sight was of the salt pans, also cool to see, before we landed back at Swakopmund Municipal Aerodome. Overall it was a great experience, and we didn’t feel airsick at all :)

We were dropped off at our hotel around 6pm. We barely had enough time to sort through our pics before heading down to dinner. I thought I had built in down time on this trip, but apparently not! It was a rather full day, another transit day that did not feel like it.