The wreck of the Zeila

Breakfast was at 8 this morning, so we had time to get our stuff on the truck and have an hour using the wifi before breakfast. I got a few more posts done, but I am still a few days behind. I’m not likely to catch up anytime soon as we are going off grid now! Henry had done pancakes with syrup and bananas for breakfast – not Mark’s thing! Luckily, we had some brown bread and cream cheese left from our time in the chalet!

By 8.30, we were back on the truck and heading up the coast road to Cape Cross to see a large colony of Cape Fur Seals. On the way, we passed the township where all the black workers from Swakopmund live. The houses are small shacks with communal ablution facilities. The Namibian government is in the process of building new units with private bathrooms for people to move in to. We also had a quick photo stop to see the wreck of Zeila, a cargo ship which ran aground in 2018. We don’t get to go far enough north on this trip to see the Skeleton Coast, where there are a huge number of shipwrecks, but we got the idea!

We passed a number of production facilities where salt is extracted from sea water and made into table salt, an important industry for Namibia’s economy.

The scenery around us was simply flat, arid desert as far as the eye could see. Occasionally, the flatness would be broken by small rocky hills. The colour remained the same.Read more