Traveling Namibia

Walvis Bay is a clean medium sized town with huge wide streets. Good provisioning here though a wee bit more expensive than South Africa. Its about a 40 minute walk to the shops and can walk along the lagoon for a bit of it and see lots of flamingos and pelicans.

We rented a car for 5 days to do some touring of Namibia. First we did a 7 hour drive up to Estoshia wildlife park and spent two nights there. Instead of staying in expensive camp accommodations, we brought our tent and camped and cooked our dinners, saving a lot of money. The game parks are not quite as well run as the ones in South Africa, but the one nice thing they had is a waterhole beside each camp that is lite up at night and you can see a steady stream of animal come down to drink.

It was still quite dry for this time of year so animals were mainly near the water holes. We saw Rhino's, Jackals, a heard of 28 elephants come down and fill the water hole. A leopard came down and came back twice to drink and then a third time to slink around and then hide in the bush. Also saw a couple of lions prowling around near a waterhole we stopped by when driving.

After coming back to the boat we then headed down to dune 45 to check out the dunes down there. This was about a 5 hour drive to park entrance where you can get a permit. Namibia seems to be mostly desert, that varies from just sand and dunes to abit of green and rock and some small trees but still dry looking. It was a beautiful drive down there and we camped again for one night and drove back the next day.

The anchorage is getting quite rolly sometimes but we seemed to miss it being away on trips. but we are now going to leave in a day or two before it gets bouncy again. We have a 1200 mile passage to St Helena ahead of us and then 700 miles to Ascension island if we decide to stop there. and then to Barbados which is about 3100miles which is our longest passage yet. The boat is jammed full with food and we are almost ready to go.  Sorry have not had time to sort pictures up for the blog.

INFO

-Have to see port control, immigration and customs to check out. Port control was no bother, just gave us a clearance document. Custom was okay though they wanted the original of our boat registration even though we were leaving, but he relented in the end as we had original on boat. Immigration says you have to go immediately when they clear you there is no 24 hour grace. Yacht club wants to know too as a courtesy and they get inquiry's about yachts. The three offices to checkout with are all at far end of port, go down main road to Puma gas station and then head for the water front and ask around.