R&P South Africa Holiday 2012: Postcard from Walvis Bay

What an extraordinary Country – 4 times the size of England but with just under 2m people! Our visit was on a Sunday, so not much going on, but arrival into the port was a tricky manoeuvre to come alongside the container berth at 90° to the approach channel and aft of the floating docks, with a 270° turn to come alongside astern. Face-to-face immigration always involves a huge but fast-moving queue, although the friendly Namibian officials had come aboard with the pilot.

Our ‘Treasures of Namibia’ tour involved 5 ¾ hours in 4x4 people-carriers trekking into the Namib desert to see the amazing and ancient geology, along with a family of springbok, some ostriches and astonishingly adapted flora. Strange to think that the desert is formed from the stumps of a mountain range which has been eroded over millennia from a lost height of 3500 feet and dumped in the sea. The sea is now returning the debris back to the shore, where the prevailing wind forms it into the amazing sand dunes, which are a feature of the ‘skeleton coast’. We passed and climbed a short way up the largest dune – Dune 7 just to see the scale of it. Not hard to see how this largely uninhabited, low-lying lee shore was such a hazard to sailing ships.

Back to the ship for tea and a swim via the coastal lagoon – a fantastic day.

Our last sailaway for this trip was just magical, band playing deck 8, Sun and wind astern as we pulled out and down the narrow channel, accompanied by dolphins and seals!

Well our way to Cape Town now, less than 300 miles to run. Arrival delayed by 30 minutes to allow for the pilot’s shift change! Hopefully it will be another breathtaking arrival in the morning, although it’s blowing a Southerly F6 at the moment!