I love the boat harbour trip around Walvis Bay. We have seen amazing bird and sea life, including a southern right whale. Unfortunately the weather was windy and inclement this morning and we would have been wet and cold if we had gone on the cruise. We therefore had a chilled start to the day before heading off around 10:30 to explore Walvis Bay.
The city of Walvis Bay (meaning Whale Bay) lies along the bay, which is a safe haven for ships because of its natural deep water harbour and has a colorful history, having been administered by South Africa for many years.
Our first stop was Pelican point, where we spent some time watching the thousands of pink lesser flamingo and their cousins, the white greater flamingo. We also saw pied avocet, a greenshank, gulls, ducks and other species. The area around Pelican Point is definitely upmarket part of town and has big beautiful houses. The town doesn't boast any of the German influence of Swakopmund and is more like a South African seaside town.
We then wondered off to the waterfront harbour area where we pottered around the few tourist shops and settled down for a lunch of oysters and calamari at ‘Sarah se Gat’ pub on the water edge. We watched boats come and go and were visited by Pelicans. There are a number of oil rigs that have been anchored off shore, they apparently are too expensive to run at present.
We were excited to have George and Sue arrive this afternoon to join us for the remainder of the trip.
We went to the German ‘Brauhaus’ for dinner – long awaited for by Graeme. I had booked a reservation 2 weeks earlier to ensure we had a booking. With beer boots and eisbein for the boys for diner – the evening did not disappoint and a good time was had by all.
(Tomorrow we head into off for 5 nights of desert camping and communications will probably be scarce).
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