Willkommen

Grill night was mostly a success. They gave us more food than we were expecting. We put in for one order of beef steak, and one for oryx, and in total, it probably reached eight pieces of meat. They gave us all the firewood, utensils, plates, and everything else we might need to complete the meal. We started the fire in the grill and started off with some potatoes. We continued with the steaks, which didn’t have a huge amount of flavor in the end, but we didn’t have any Mrs. Dash on hand in the middle of the Namib desert. We also grilled a tomato, and had some pasta salad on the side. It was a hearty meal, and we didn’t use about four pieces of meat. We put these in the mini-fridge so animals wouldn’t come after them in the night.  

 After dinner, and as we were taking some more star photos, I heard a noise coming from the direction of our hut. I shined my flashlight in that direction, but didn’t see anything. I moved around to the side of the hut and locked eyes with what I think was a cape fox, whose eyes were creepily reflecting my light with a red glow. Nicole had just finished taking a picture and I told her to go inside. I figured this animal was far more afraid of us than we were of it, but it’s hard to relax and take pictures while there’s a wild animal patrolling our hut. Once inside, we heard another thump. It appeared that the fox was trying to get something out of our garbage. This continued on for some time. I would periodically look outside in the blackness to see it on the lid of the garbage. At some point during the night, it succeeded in not only opening the lid, but somehow removing the plastic bag inside of it. When we woke up all we found was an empty water bottle and a pad of butter on the ground outside our hut, along with three groupings of turdlets, but the garbage can was still upright in its original position. I had questions.   

 Anyway, we had a long drive ahead of us, but we got started fairly early. After being shaken around for about 3.5 hours on the bumpy gravel roads, we encountered some sort of quasi-paved road as we neared Walvis Bay. It was a strange feeling to not have my limbs feel like they were being vibrated off their joints. Shortly after Walvis Bay, we arrived in the town of Swakopmund (known more familiarly as just Swako). We checked into the Driftwood B&B which is just a couple miles out of town near the beach, and ended up renting some bikes to ride into town and explore. 

 There is a heavy German influence from the area’s history as a major port for German Southwest Africa during its colonial era. Many buildings are named after the Kaiser or other early 20th-century German political or military leaders. It is kind of a surreal place. When we arrived a marine layer had swept over the area, and it had burned off in about an hour. It was just like L.A. The brightly colored buildings and blue ocean water contrasted starkly with the desert and dunes immediately beyond the town. It was a strange sight. The coastal area itself looks very well-to-do and seems more visually at home in Malibu than in Namibia, but every day is a surprise here. We locked up our bikes and walked around the town center for a bit. Lots of people were hawking different things, which wasn’t fun, but some were wearing orange vests labeled, “Hawker,” as if the town somehow regulates people trying to sell things on the street. It was . . .interesting. We eventually circled back to the Swakopmund Brewing Co. for a couple beers and bratwurst (naturally). From there we biked back to the Driftwood before deciding to order a pizza for take away. 

   An intense-looking German woman took our order and marched in-and-out of the establishment looking crazed before we finally got our pizzas 40 minutes later. They were, however, good pizzas. The driftwood gave us a bottle of red wine from South Africa that helped wash it all down. We sat on our balcony looking out at . . .nothing really. We are a block from the beach and a four-lane major boulevard, but we saw maybe three cars the entire time we sat out there. One of them was a security vehicle. It’s a cute town, but it has a certain edge to it, like everyone is afraid to go out at night, and there seems to be a lot of security precautions. Anyway, we leave tomorrow for a long drive up to Etosha National Park. Our main reason for staying in Swako was just to break up the drive with something different. Here’s hoping for some paved roads...