Photos and Slideshow to come! Gotta get the words down first!!
We said goodbye to Cape Town and flew north to Namibia, landing in Walvis Bay — a place where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Namib Desert in a way that feels almost improbable.
From the air, the landscape looked like someone had taken a giant paintbrush and swept endless shades of tan and rust across the earth. No trees. No green. Just dunes, ocean, and sky.
At the airport we were met by Abraham, our Namibian guide, who would be taking care of us during this portion of the trip. On the drive he filled us in on life in Namibia — marriage customs, education, unemployment (currently around 36%), and the realities of healthcare in a country where the population is small but the distances are enormous.
Namibia feels vast.
Swakopmund
We are staying in Swakopmund, which is one of the more unexpected places I’ve ever seen.
Imagine a tidy German seaside town, complete with colonial-era buildings, bakeries, and neat streets — except it’s wedged between the Atlantic Ocean and the Namib Desert.
Palm trees line the streets, the ocean fog rolls in from the coast, and just a few miles inland the dunes begin.
It feels a little bit like someone picked up a town from northern Germany and dropped it into the desert. (“Swakopmund” means the mouth (“mund” in German) of the Swakop River.)
Sandwich Harbour: Where the Dunes Meet the Sea
The next morning we set out for Sandwich Harbour, which sits inside the Namib-Naukluft National Park and is one of the few places on earth where giant desert dunes crash directly into the ocean.
Getting there involves serious dune driving — the kind where the vehicle climbs steep slopes of sand and then slides down the other side in long sweeping arcs. Our driver navigated the dunes like a rally racer while the Atlantic surf pounded below.
Along the way we saw jackals, springbok, and an oryx family. One had two young companions — one looking about a year old and another that might have been only days or weeks old. I tried to photograph the tiny one with my telephoto lens, but it stubbornly refused to turn toward us.
Wildlife photography is often an exercise in patience.
Flamingos, Pelicans, and the Color of Shrimp
The lagoons near Walvis Bay are famous for their birds.
We saw flamingos, but many of them were white rather than pink. Our guide explained that flamingos turn pink from eating shrimp and algae rich in carotenoids. Juveniles remain pale until they’ve eaten enough of the good stuff. (He kept saying it was due it the “creatine” – I kept thinking of the consternation of pink bodybuilders, until I actually looked it up.)
Apparently flamingos need about a year of shrimp consumption before they fully commit to pink.
We also saw large white pelicans, which develop a faint pink blush on their chests too.
Nature, it seems, enjoys color coordination.
Lunch by a Shipwreck
Eventually we stopped near the rusted skeleton of a grounded ship: the Shawnee, a tug that ran aground here in 1967.
The story goes that the Shawnee had successfully rescued a distressed oil tanker from a sandbar — only to have its own engines fail after ingesting too much sand during the operation.
A noble but unfortunate ending.
Right beside this wreck — because Namibia is apparently comfortable with dramatic picnic locations — the guides set up a full lunch for us: champagne, oysters, schnitzel, and assorted other delights, all served with the Atlantic wind blowing across the dunes.
Travel has its moments.
Diamonds in the Sand
One of the most surprising things about the Namib Desert is what’s actually in the sand.
At several stops our guide showed us patches of black sand. When he ran a magnet through it, the particles jumped up and clung to the metal.
It was magnetite.
Then he poured some of it into my hand and moved the magnet underneath, causing the grains to swirl and dance across my palm like iron filings in a science experiment.
Elsewhere we noticed the sand sparkling in the sunlight.
Those glittering flecks?
Mica.
And the tiny reddish grains scattered through the sand?
Garnets.
Actual garnets.
Not the sort you’d set into a ring, but still — gemstones casually mixed into the desert.
Namibia does not lack for geological drama.
The Mystery of the Mussel Shells
In several places we saw strange white piles scattered across the dunes — far from the ocean.
Prehistoric shell beds?
No.
Our guide explained that gulls carry mussels inland, dropping them on the hot sand until the shells open from the heat. The gulls then return for an easy meal.
Nature’s version of cooking.
Nara Melon
Another plant that survives here is the nara melon, a strange desert fruit that grows on sprawling thorny bushes.
It’s an important traditional food source in the Namib Desert — both the fruit and the seeds are edible.
I somehow managed to forget to photograph it, which I regret because it looked like something that might have evolved on another planet.
Salt Pans
Driving back toward Walvis Bay we passed massive salt works — huge pink evaporation ponds stretching toward the horizon.
The salt harvested here is shipped raw to South Africa for processing, sometimes eventually appearing in markets as pink “Himalaya” salt. (If you want actual “Namibia salt,” there must be either a lighthouse or an ibex on the label.)
Production here runs around 35,000 tons per month.
Which is… a lot of margaritas.
Tomorrow we head north along the Skeleton Coast.
And encounter one of the loudest, smelliest wildlife spectacles on earth.