Travel Chapter 14- Namibia1

Travel Chapter 14
February 15, 2009

We arrived early Friday morning, February 14th into the harbor of Walfis Bay, Namibia. This is a fairly large harbor now and the main one of the country. It used to be a whaling station where it got its name,

We are in this harbor for 3 days so we had scheduled some activity on land. B and I had been here two years ago when we met our Namibian friend Beatrix. It was a chance meeting in the supermarket of Walfis. We had gone in there to buy some water as we had decided to take a taxi to Swakopmund, a town about 20 miles north on the coast. I saw a nice lady shopping ahead of us so I went up to her and asked her how much it would cost to take a taxi. She that she did not know as she never takes taxis but if we wanted she would take us there herself. We thought that would be fun so we accepted and spent a nice day with our new found Namibian friend called Beatrix.

This time Beatrix was tied up in traveling to Windhoek, the capital so we were on our own. I therefore booked us into a hotel in Swakopmund called the Schwiezer Haus. I had got a very good rate on the internet and had asked the hotel to send a driver to pick us up. Swakopmund is the resort town of Namibia and has retained a great amount of German influence in buildings and even language. Until the end of the First World War, it was known as German South West Africa, a colony of Germany. A great number of German families had settled there and had been involved mainly in farming. I even have two families of relatives who had lived here and one of the children had been born here. The colony has a gruesome colonial history.

South Africa occupied the German colony of South-West Africa during World War I and administered it as a mandate until after World War II, when it annexed the territory. In 1966 the Marxist South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) guerrilla group launched a war of independence for the area that became Namibia, but it was not until 1988 that South Africa agreed to end its administration in accordance with a UN peace plan for the entire region. Namibia has been governed by SWAPO since the country won independence in 1990. Hifikepunye POHAMBA was elected president in November 2004 in a landslide victory replacing Sam NUJOMA who led the country during its first 14 years of self rule.

Luckily Emmett noticed that we had reservations to visit the desert the next morning starting at 7.30am so I cancelled our hotel reservation in Swakopmund but retained the taxi service. So at 10.30 we got off the ship for the first time in 8 days and there stood a lady taxi driver with a board with our name on it. Always a nice touch when arriving in a country to have someone waiting. We boarded our minibus and drove the 30kms north along the coast. It is an impressive drive as one has the desert on the right and the ocean on the right. The Namib desert is immense as it never really rains. On the right one sees huge dunes of orange colored dunes. The water of Namibia is cold and rich in plankton which makes it great for fishing. Endless beaches are a feature of this coast although swimming is a bit of a challenge as it rarely gets above 20 degrees.
Swakopmund is the name given by the local tribes to the river that comes out at this town. It means brown water as drinking it results in sure stomach problems. The Germans set this town up as a resort place where people from inland could come and vacation by the sea. One can only imagine the pleasure it gave people living in the dry and desertic inland would derive by being near water and to be able to frolic in a medium which is a rare commodity in their lives.

The city itself is as clean as it a whistle and the houses are all very well maintained, streets are named Bismarck Strasse, Bahnhofstrasse and others. The beach is nice and there is a cool breeze coming off the ocean.

We went straight to the Crystal Museum which we had visited on our last trip. Emmett is an avid stone collector and of course he was in seventh heaven. There are huge Chrystal stones as Namibia is a great source of all sorts of stones, including a huge industry of gem and other stones, including off shore diamonds which bring in $500 million a year. A fun aspect of the museum is that one can by an empty plastic bag which one then can fill up from piles of various polished stones laid out in a small garden of the museum. Emm spent 20 minutes going from one pile to another collecting all manner of stones.


After that we ambled down to the beach and went into the Two Ocean restaurant which is on the beach. We found a table at the window and I ordered my favorite South African fist, the king clip. It is a medium sized fish with white meat with a consistency almost of lobster.

After lunch, we visited the German museum which is really quite good for a little place like this. It is full of bric a brac of German memorabilia. But it also has a section showing the way of live of the various indigenous tribes of Namibia. We then headed up to the Schweitzer Haus hotel and Café Anton. On the way, we walked through a rather large handicraft market with a large variety of handicraft. Brigitte saw a headrest she wanted for Gaby and I was delegated to negotiate the piece from the vendor. One of my favorite pastime is negotiating. We then separated and I headed to the local supermarket to get a newspaper. On my return, I found B and Emm sitting in a local conditorei or pastry having ice-cream. I joined them and we returned to the Café Anton where I phoned our driver to pick us up as we had had enough of the town and wished to return to the ship. She then drove us back to Walfis. Luckily she could enter the port area as our ship was parked more than a mile from the main gate and it is a long walk in the hot sun. I do not find it very friendly of the local authorities to have given a ship with 700 passengers such a faraway berth.

This morning at 0730 we boarded a group of 5 minibuses and headed into the Namib for a geological and botanical tour of an area called the Moonscape.

You can see pictures of this visit at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/akeyserlingk/Namibia2009?authkey=tYp06X_MBAo
It is a very appropriate name as that part of the desert is made up of great rocks and hills of stone rising up from the floor of the desert. It was an interesting drive of over 4 hours. At one hill, we climbed up to find huge rocks which were very high in iron content. The rocks could be pounded with a stone and gave off various notes almost sounding like the tones one would get by hitting a large piece of iron. We had the music prof with us and he set up his sound equipment to record a rock banging session of 10 of us doing our rendition of the Concert in the Namib Desert…

Luckily the minivans were air-conditioned as it got to over 40 degrees Celsius. A nice touch was that after viewing a plant which only grows in Namib and lives up to 1500 years, the group ended the tour with a snack set up for us by the tour group. It was great to get something to eat and drink in the heat of the desert. But the real treat was some 4 dozen Namibian oysters lying in ice with lemons and a bottle of Tabasco sauce. Most of the others did not eat oysters but Emm dove in and had a few. I dove in and had at least a dozen if not 18 of the best oysters I have ever had, and I have had a few in my time. In fact, I was told that these oysters were imported very small from Chile. In Namibia, with its rich and cold water, these oysters thrive and grow quickly to edible size. It takes them only 9 months in the Namibian waters to grow to a size which takes oysters in Europe well over 18 months.

After oysters in the desert, we continued on heading towards the now famous Dune 7. This dune is named as it is 7 miles from Walfis Bay. It is an immense dune well over 100 meters high rising fairly steeply to its top. From our group of 20 students and adults, only 2 girls and Emmett started up the climb to the summit. It looked like a hard climb as the sand is soft and each step is tough. But all three made it and they sat there enjoying the view of the ocean. The Emmett started down the hill taking giant strides and sliding. Suddenly his hat flew off his head and headed across the dune with Emm in hot pursuit. He had to run but the hat kept being blow ahead of him. Bear in mind that the sun was pouring down on his now shaved head so the hat was vital. Finally the wind stopped pushing the hat and it stopped so he could collect it and return to the bottom, exhausted but proud of having accomplished the climb of Dune 7.

We then headed back to the ship in time to take a shower to get rid of the sand and to make lunch before it closed down. The afternoon was spent quietly resting from the events of the morning.

If you want an other slant on this trip, the website of this program carries a blog which is being written by a professional writer. It also carries pictures and can be seen under: www.semesteratsea.org under current voyage. It also carries pictures and the current one shows all our baldies from Neptune day. Emmett can be seen in the first rows on the right of the picture.

It has been a sad month in our family as we lost 4 male Keyserlingks in that period. First the grandson of my sister Cecile, the son of Katrin and Sebastian Spano of Ottawa lost his battle against cancer at the age of 12. Then a 5 year old Jon Keyserlingk was killed in Australia by a crocodile. An other cousin, Curt von Keyserlingk who had only recently retired as a journalist with the national business journal was killed while bicycling Curt was an avid cyclist and had moved south to be in a quiet town north of Cape Town. Brigitte and I had agreed with Curt to stay in Tulbagh and have dinner with him next week while we are in Cape Town. We both liked Curt and will still go to Tulbagh and overnight there to pay our respects. Curt is survived by his only son Curt von Keyserlingk who is in his early 20’s and is a highly gifted mathematician studying at Cambridge in the UK. Curt also has a daughter living in Cape Town whom we will try and meet while there later this week.

Finally we learnt that my cousin Alexander Keyserlingk brother of Ulli Barrett of Johannesburg and who ranched in Veron BC in Canada also passed away. It is appropriate that we are currently in Namibia, as Alexander was born here and then moved to Canada in the 60’s to start up ranching.

Well, on a less somber note, we are off to have lunch with our Namibian friend Beatrix. More on that in a next chapter.
Cheers